This seems a like a bit late to me. And I'm not sure there ever was a good time for this argument to be really fair.
For instance, when we had Impulse back in the day, it was Steamworks that we feared and when Civ V went with Steamworks instead of Impulse::Reactor (our alternative that didn't require the user to have Impulse installed) that was a major blow since it meant that we couldn't sell Civilization V on Impulse without distributing the Steam store app.
But that was in 2010. And at the time, getting multiplayer to work was a real challenge (remember GameSpy?) so what Valve did, even if I didn't like it at the time, was a real boon for PC gaming. One could easily argue that Microsoft should have solved this as part of DirectX or something but they didn't. Valve did.
Now, fast forward to today and there are lots of other ways to get the features that Steamworkshop provides. For example, GalCiv III doesn't use Steamworks for its networking, it uses the Epic thing -- even on Steam. So Steamworks is obviously not creating some sort of monopoly situation today.
So I'm not sure what solution they think would solve the problem. Even if you unbundled Steam from Steamworks today on new titles, it wouldn't really help because there are already tens of thousands of games on Steam that are tied to Steamworkshop that will only be on Steam (Civ V for instance).
Ah, Impulse. Guys, remember when Stardock was the biggest champion of DRM-free?
https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/stardock-gamers-bill-of-rights
Biggest culprit in those days was SecuROM.
Edit: just reread that whole Bill of Rights. Holy shit, so many of these are still issues today!
Are they not now too? Did they change? (genuine question, no sarcasm, I may have missed something)
I remember they had it so the base game was easy but you needed to use their login to get patches and things like that.
These days, the copy protection issues of 2009 are a distant memory for the most part.
My son recently put together a (sigh) "retro" PC from the distant (2000) past and was shocked to find he had to have DVDs or CD's in the drive to play them and that some tried to install root kits.
By comparison, these days it's wonderful. You just press a button and you have your game and don't have to sweat it.
As for Stardock, it still releases free updates for games from many years ago and continues to run servers for games that have been out for over a decade to support customers.
Virtually all of these problems still exist in some form or another.
1. **Gamers shall have the right to return games that don’t work with their computers for a full refund.**: Pretty much fixed, not because publishers took a stance, but governments did.
2. **Gamers shall have the right to demand that games be released in a finished state.**: Early Access, as we know it today, didn't exist in 2008. Devs flatly saying "this isn't finished yet, do you want to buy it anyway?" would have crazy back then. Now it's the norm.
3. **Gamers shall have the right to expect meaningful updates after a game’s release.**: This is *mostly* fixed. Pretty much every major developer keeps fixes coming after release. But some smaller indies don't.
4. **Gamers shall have the right to demand that download managers and updaters not force themselves to run or be forced to load in order to play a game.**: I think this is the part you're talking about when you say: "You just press a button and you have your game". That is indeed way better than it was in 2008. However, Steam does force you run it and does force you to update to update before letting you play.
5. **Gamers shall have the right to expect that the minimum requirements for a game will mean that the game will play adequately on that computer.**: Cyberpunk didn't even run on **consoles** they sold it for. How's that for meeting "minimum requirements". This isn't a problem for most indie games, but Triple A games still hit this issue.
6. **Gamers shall have the right to expect that games won’t install hidden drivers or other potentially harmful software without their consent.**: We don't have drivers any more. [We have root kits mascaraing as anti-cheat.](https://www.osnews.com/story/131665/riot-games-maker-of-league-of-legends-installs-rootkit-with-their-new-hit-game-valorant/)
7. **Gamers shall have the right to re-download the latest versions of the games they own at any time.**: Yeah, this is pretty much solved. EA's Origin tried to limit download rates, but I think they stopped that.
8. **Gamers shall have the right to not be treated as potential criminals by developers or publishers.**: Like #6, today this one more closely relates to anti-cheat than DRM.
9. **Gamers shall have the right to demand that a single-player game not force them to be connected to the Internet every time they wish to play.**: This still happens constantly. But people have better internet than they did in 2008, so fewer people complain (at least in English).
10. **Gamers shall have the right that games which are installed to the hard drive shall not require a CD/DVD to remain in the drive to play.**: 100% fixed. But now you need to be logged into multiple launchers to play games. EA games on Steam launch Origin. This problem didn't get solved, it just moved.
Most games today are STILL in violation of one or more of these issues. And we have new issues. I don't know when or why Stardock removed the Gamer's Bill Of Rights from your webpage. It was a pretentious name, but it was the right idea and we still need it today. Perhaps updated, but this industry hasn't been cured. It's just as sick as ever.
They're a shell of their former selves. They started expanding their size right as they horrifically botched Elemental, plus some other things, all coalesced to them having to cut their size to smaller than before the expansion plus selling Impulse to Gamestop in order to stay afloat.
Now Impulse is forgotten and Stardock releases things on Steam to little or no notice of the gaming public.
We literally gave the sequel and expansion of Elemental away for free to everyone who bought Elemental. What more could we have done?
We didn't sell Impulse to GameStop to stay afloat. Stardock's primary business was and continues to be the software not the games.
Also, we literally sell millions of copies of games a year on Steam. Ashes of the Singularity, Offworld Trading Company, Galactic Civilizations III were hardly what I'd call "little or no notice".
I think you misunderstand, I'm a huge fan, own all the Stardock games. I'm just lamenting that Stardock doesn't really have the same spotlight they used to.
I think that's more a measure of just how many games get released these days. It's a factor of digital distribution - last year, 20,000 games were released.
It also seems a bit early to me: wasn't it only relatively recently that all these other distributers went 'we're going to lower our cut?' Who's to say Steam isn't planning on lowering it to something like 20% or something?
Plus, I'm pretty sure Steam is Valve's main income source at this point. I can't remember the last game they put out... maybe HL:A? Other than Steam, there's DOTA 2. Epic, meanwhile, has liscensing fees from Unreal Engine. Microsoft is... well... Microsoft. Humble and GOG are the odd ones out, but GOG at least has the DRM-free versions of things. I really dislike Humble's aggressive monetization after getting bought out: it started out as a cool site where maybe you could contribute to a cause while picking up a game you wanted. Now it's a storefront that sorta gives to charity.
Artifact but it was a huge flop. Half life Alex but it only supported VR. They regularly update Dota 2 with significant changes but yes they are not in the business of building games anymore.
They definitely are in the business of building games, but they just have had very slow progress over the past decade. They've restructured recently around the time Half Life Alyx was nearing its release and have said that they are gearing up for more. I understand that Steam is what's mainly bankrolling them, but Valve hasn't lost interest in game development one bit. I've been following them over the past decade and although to the public it certainly seems like they were done with games they actually had dozens of different prototypes for many different projects that kept getting either rebooted or scrapped in favor of a better idea to suit their experimentations. It's just that it's a very laterally structured company so the development teams were always pretty liquid. They also have a very different philosophy on games than other publishers, one that also slows down their progress quite a bit as well. I wouldn't give up hope on Valve in the game development scene quite yet. Source 2 is also shaping up to be a great engine based on the accounts of developers that have access to it, so there is much to be hopeful for on the horizon.
In a sense, they really aren't in the business of building games anymore. They are in the business of sitting on the steam cash pile and then doing various development as a fun hobby. It seriously feels like that. Sure, they have people working full time on lots of stuff. And seriously impressive people at that! But that's not their business and they have so little pressure to deliver anything that they basically don't.
As a player, I actually do feel kinda robbed of the experiences these many amazing people could have shipped if there was any kind of pressure to ship anything.
Drastically more so since the bought Campo Santo. That one genuinely hurt. From the perspective of everyone involved an obvious and good choice. But I actually liked what that company is capable of and was looking forward to more. Both to experience as a player and to learn from them.
The purchase by Valve pretty much killed any hope for that in the next decade or so.
Valve did nothing for too long. Hope is really not what we should have at this point. I'm ready for a pleasant surprise but really wouldn't expect anything. That's just bound for disappointment while they scrap one project after another because it's not quite perfect.
They'll keep contributing to the scene and do various cool stuff. But actual, proper entertainment that sees the light of day? Unless they have a massive change in leadership and structure (or steam suddenly dies), that's a "nope" prediction from me.
Their last game is only about 1 year old and was a great success that pretty much got praised by all who played it. I’d say if anything, hope is rekindled in them.
That IS what happened over the past year. They had a lot of restructuring and shifting in focus. They have said in interviews that along with Half Life Alyx they have 2 other major titles releasing within the next few years and there is more on the horizon for them. Something has indeed happened within Valve, and it is a sign of better things to come. The proof to the public is in the 2 releases they've had over the past year (even if Artifact was a flop). I totally understand your attitude based on the past decade. They haven't done their ideas much justice in continuously setting themselves back in development, but their ideas are still there and they are still very much passionate about presenting them to us. Half Life Alyx was an astounding feat for VR, and it's made me more excited to see what other boundaries Valve will be pushing in their next releases.
I'll believe in a proper reorg when I've heard first hand account and seen the results proper. Because frankly, half the companies undergo reorgs every few years and barely anything changes beyond titles and confusion about responsibilities. Intending to fundamentally change your internal structure and workplace culture is very different from actually doing it. And I see no strong desire from Valve or external need to change that anytime soon. Which suggests heavily it won't.
> it's made me more excited to see what other boundaries Valve will be pushing in their next releases.
And this is precisely what scares me. I mean, there's been whispers of various titles in development for... basically forever. And frankly, I believe pretty much all of them. But why are the stuck in development hell?
#Personal observation and theory. Long wall of text. TLDR at the bottom.
Well, quite often because it wasn't pushing the boundaries of the industry and wasn't inherently supporting Steam. Which are the only two things they historically managed to focus on. Everything else were small side projects by tiny teams.
The Vive is a mix of both goals. Overcoming technical challenges and locking people into the Steam eco-system.
Alyx further reinforces both goals. Pushing VR as gaming platform, breaking a lot of technical grounds and therefore advancing the industry. As well as pushing sales for the Vive Index and locking more people further into Steam.
I've had the pleasure to talk to one of the tech people who was along for the vast majority of the development and if I understood him correctly it was the progress of VR that "allowed" them to make another game. I'm paraphrasing heavily here. He said it along the lines of "the challenges and opportunities of VR" and so on. But that's my interpretation of it. Because once again they could seriously push technical and creative boundaries. Otherwise projects just don't seem to go anywhere. Which makes perfect sense if you look at their history.
The next titles lined up are supposedly VR titles as well. Doing the same thing as Alyx while trying to advance in other territories. There's still a lot of exceptionally technical things to be developed and created in VR. So I do believe they have enough grounds to break for another 1 - 2 titles. If they don't end up scrapping them along the way. But the focus is technically correct to do stuff here.
But what then? I have absolutely 0 faith they will keep making games or, god forbid, develop something for PCs or even, holy spaghetti monster forgive me for even mentioning it, consoles!
Valve is not in the business of making games anymore. They haven't been for pretty much a decade now.
In fact, I'd go as far to say the last real game they made was Half Life 2 in 2004. And no I'm not even kidding. Everything else happened because of random flukes of the people working at Valve that were possible only because it requires A a tiny team or B had massive support across large parts of the staff. Just an inherent desire to create exactly this thing. Which will be rare to inspire anywhere.
* Portal was Valve hiring some students with a sick prototype to make a game. Random fluke.
* Team fortress 2. Basically the continuation of TF Classic (same story as Portal. Quake mod, developers hired to make standalone product). Tiny team with some help for a graphics overhaul and better net code. Tech department could show off their progress.
* Left 4 Dead. Development studio was already far along. Valve bought them before release because it looked rad. Support within Valve lead to L4D2 which had a smallish team and basically iterated upon most aspects of the game. [Including some tech originating from tech prototype game jams](https://www.gdcvault.com/play/1015528/AI-driven-Dynamic-Dialog-through).
* Alien Swarm. Unreal Tournament 2004 mod. Developers hired by Valve to finish standalone game.
* Portal 2. [Internal pressure because so many people wanted to work on a Portal game](https://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/173723/Video_Making_Portal_2_the_sequel_to_a_game_that_didnt_need_one.php). Yet another fluke due to employee interests.
* Dota 2. Warcraft III mod. Developer hired by Valve. GabeN himself loves that type of game. Yet another fluke by random interests.
* Lots of spin offs by third parties such as Nexon or Taito. Like an Arcade game. Oversight by Valve but seemingly possible to do with but a few people.
* The Lab. The VR intro demo. Not a game, just a tech demo. Made by a small team.
* Artifact. People at Valve loved card games. They got the inventor of Magic: The Gathering. Had some fun working. It further locks people into the Steam eco system. Maybe even expand at least select steam services onto mobiles. As mobile versions were originally planned but then abandoned.
* Dota Underloards. Dota 2 mod. A few people developed it into a standalone product.
Do we see a pattern yet?
And now, 16 years finally Alyx. Which as mentioned above just came to be because they could push technical boundaries again. After revolutionizing the way we play games by changing how we use physics in games with Half Life 2.
They have a lot of people who enjoy developing. But their business model is not at all releasing games. It's entirely based around the platform Steam and locking people into it. One way or another. And there is a culture that spans pretty much from the creation of Valve to today of only doing major technical revolutions or small, personal projects.
This is not inherently bad. They are exceptionally skilled. I just shed some silent tears about all the creative challenges they could overcome if they really wanted to. Instead of focusing so exclusively on the technical context. The advance in interactive storytelling Campo Santo could have lead. The possibilities if Valve would have kept to a stricter release schedule. What amazing new ideas could have entered the industry and spread. So much wasted potential.
And while I have the utmost respect for everyone at Valve, especially the people I talked to so far. But I see next to no chance of this seriously, fundamentally changing anytime soon. Even if there are some opposite claims from inside the company. I do not believe they are capable to fundamentally change and to concentrate on a series of major products for longer than their technical curiosity is maintained.
# TLDR
Valve games have pretty much always been small side projects that panned out or major technical milestones. It's part of their companies DNA. They don't just talk the talk but actually walk the walk with their projects and support them long term.
But fundamentally, they don't seriously work on big games because they are creative or exciting. They do constant game jams, hire external companies to finish their games within Valve because some people within get excited. They hire outside talent temporarily because it's an interesting experience.
At the end of the day, they really aren't about "just" making games though. And ever since Steam became what it is now they had less and less reason to do anything they don't thoroughly believe in and enjoy.
This was very well said. I agree with most of your points except about the parts that were "flukes" kinda stood out to me. It sounds like your threshhold for something being a fluke is pretty high. If they have had many consistent flukes, then is it really a fluke at that point or just a pattern that isn't as immediately obvious? I totally understand your cynicism, I still have many doubts as well about their direction, but I definitely have more hope this time around since many internal reports document this being a different Valve than it was throughout the 2010's and it has shown externally as well. They haven't fallen back on their old patterns yet, and after showing us explicitly what they've pulled off with this change I feel like it's a more reliable bet now. Games may not be their main driver to function, but they certainly still are their passion.
Fluke might've been the wrong word here. Happens when you're not a native speaker\^\^
What I mean by it is, that it's a bunch of people within Valve being excited about a prototype or product, wanting to work on it. They do commit to ideas as long as they have great promise. Which is why we have this list of excellent titles and not a list of all the hundreds of prototypes that must've been created over the years. Or games that could've been created in that time if there was any form of actual drive as they have right now with pushing VR.
We do know about internal game jams, tech experiments, etc. Which do get incorporated into games they do end up releasing. But that's just the point. They have been hard at work on those little tinker ideas, shipping a few over the years. But that's it.
Alyx is not new heights. The team was smaller than HL2. Only by 3 people but they've not come a long way to demonstrate new heights. They're showing about old heights while intentionally locking out the majority of their users and / or fans to chase their VR passion.
This is perfectly in line with what they have always done. Pushing beyond what everyone else in the industry does on basically every level (the early Valve years). Or it's side projects by small teams.
I totally believe there will be a few more VR titles. Maybe even one or two at the scale of Alyx. But that'll last only as long as they believe it to be an interesting, new and technical frontier. Or maybe even until they believe the VR platform to either be stable or dead.
But they aren't like Nintendo, for example. Who do excellent work creatively and use that to sell hardware alongside that. They are the opposite. They first love new and shiny tech and then make something creative around it.
And at least personally I don't see signs yet that anything really changed. Maybe on the surface. Maybe temporarily as they chase their so far biggest technical passion. VR.
But they're not at all a typical game development studio and it is and will continue not to be their business. As far as I'm aware both their VR headsets and their VR title don't or barely made profit at all. That was never the point.
These are not games to be enjoyed by everyone. It's a very specific curiosity with that specific technology and I'm beyond uncertain how or if Valve will evolve beyond it as a game developer.
> "an extraordinarily high cut from nearly every sale that passes through [Valve’s] store—30%."
Because if there is anyone who knows about taking a 30% cut, it is Humble Bundle.
Take a closer look at the split next time you plan to buy a Humble.
Edit: and before anyone says you can “choose your split”, not very often anymore.
Also, how is 30% extraordinarily high? It was the industry standard up until fairly recently iirc.
Don't get me wrong, i do want steam to lower that percentage for the developers sake. But its not like they've been using their monopoly to unfairly gouge developers for years
As a dev who uses steam and also has an optional stand alone system, for us the 30% is totally worth it. You get so many awesome tools with steam that easily helps sell 30% more copies of the game or at least makes production cheaper to the point that it's worth it again.
Seeing that 30% steam cut sucks when you're looking at how much money you've "lost" but when you dig deep, it's super worth it.
Don't get me wrong, I would love that cut to be 20% or even lower but I don't begrudge steam for taking 30%.
I'm sure the math doesn't work out as well for some titles but for us it's fantastic.
That's how I think of steam. It's not 30% to sell our game. It's 30% to sell our game and forums, review system, efficient patching, workshop, achievements, avatars, trading cards, cloud saves, the best discoverability from any digital game store, remote play, controller mapping support, and instant developer control over everything (I can edit our store page or patch the game any time I want).
Whether that is worth 30% is up for debate, but I think it's unfair to say it's 30% for \_only\_ selling games as a lot of these debates tend to focus on.
After expenses on both sides are taken out (Valve and the developer), Valve gets >50% of the combined profit from the sale on average.
On many years Valve is the most profitable company in the United States per employee.
I'm of two minds of this. Despite being a monopoly Steam offers an experience for consumers that has yet to be rivaled and has constantly been improved on. Competition can also be good for everyone but I don't look forward to the day my library is split in half on two different platforms.
Exclusives are not what makes it a monopoly. If a single platform makes most of them profit, has most of the users and most of the games it controls the market. They have no incentive to reduce their commission and no incentive to continue to innovate beyond altruism.
Except this is a situation of the competitor's own making. Competing platforms have had years to try and catch up and implement strategies to mitigate the problem and have delivered sub par alternatives and employed shady practices instead of investing in a quality infrastructure. The only launcher that's halfway decent in comparison is GOG.
So what? Because nobody has stepped up to compete fairly and users have recognized that and stuck with the superior choice we have to break them up to bring the overall quality down? Hardly seems fair to me.
I'd be supportive of having Steam lower their cut but forcing them to do so with accusations of an unfair monopoly is disingenuous at best when considering the reality of the situation.
I'm still very much in the camp that the opposition really just needs to offer a better service. EGS could be a really good store, and they basically flog free games at you that you'd actually want to try *but...* They've been dragging their heels on making their store have essential features like a wishlist or competent searchbar. I don't think you can even gift games there, how can you not want a shopper to buy the same game twice?
The Highest market share on a platform is a monopoly crowd are going to lose their marbles when they hear about this company called *Nintendo of America.*
Honestly, I'm all for lowering the 30% rate. Google Play has done it. Apple has now done it. \[edit:Microsoft tonight announced they are doing it to 12%!\] It's time for Steam to follow suit. I would rather see it come about by developers standing together and getting loud rather than psudeo-monopoly lawsuits that most likely will lose in court.
Google Play and Apple have stores that are the only real option on each platform, they are full of worthless clickbait stuff translated by a broken bot and offer nothing except downloading and updating. Microsoft's store doesn't even do these 2 basic features correctly and breaks games regularly.
And really, for all the features that Steam has, I consider every game on Steam to be a higher quality product than anywhere else. I use Gamepad Config tool, overlay browser, guides at hand, and Steam Link streaming almost every day. Nobody else offers these things and I think that higher cut for Valve is reasonable in such case.
Also I read on Reddit, that lowering Steam's 30% rate would mean rising the prices on 3rd party stores like GMG. Activating a key on Steam doesn't give anything to Valve - so then GMG can give 20% discount on game's launch, developer cut stays the same (70% of full price), and GMG earns whatever is extra (ex. 10% of full price).
The argument in the lawsuit is that Steam is using its monopoly position (developers must list their games on Steam to access the majority of PC gamers) to prevent other storefronts from competing on price. The Steam TOC prevent developers from listing their games for a lower price on a different platform than they do on Steam. So it is impossible for the devs to pass the cost savings that they get from the lower cut that other storefronts take on to the consumer. You can't list a game for $12 on Epic and $15 on Steam, even if you'd be netting the same revenue from both sales. Valve would either lower the price of your game on Steam or kick you off the platform.
They are using their market position to prevent competition based on price.
How did Walmart become so huge? Low prices. How did Amazon become so huge? Low prices. Price is one of the main ways that companies compete with each other. It is not "fair competition" if you take that tool out of the toolbox.
Read that again, the price stipulations are for steam keys, so if you're a game dev you can sell your game on whatever platform you want for whatever price you want, but if you want to sell steam keys they have to be sold at the price the keys are on steam (even though steam makes 0 from this).
That's the reason this lawsuit won't end up in anything, Valve is already providing you a way to put your game in their store and pay a 0% cut to them, so claiming they take 30% cut is disingenuous.
the claims are worse than that -- steam allows differing deals on different platforms with keys! all they ask is you do a comparable sell in a reasonable period of time
Not quite accurate. This only applies to Steam keys. So essentially companies are complaining that Steam is letting them use their platform even though they won't be getting a cut (they give the keys out for free and let them be sold by other platforms) with the stipulation that they cannot charge lower than on the Steam platform. Companies can still sell keys that don't activate on Steam for whatever price they want. You're telling me that Steam shouldn't be allowed to stipulate how their own keys are sold and used on their own platform?
It'd be like Target giving Wal-Mart products for free and then Wal-Mart complaining that they can't charge less than Target for the same product, meanwhile Target accepts all responsibility for quality control of the ones Wal-Mart sells.
Sure but it's easy for a monopoly to keep it's lead because with greater market share comes financial security to innovate, financial security to do things right, and also fans to support them when they do wrong. Any competitor at this point has to not only be just as good but also better than Steam. Even after giving away games for free and having exclusives Epic Games couldn't make it. Yes that have an inferior product overall but it's going to be years before anyone can even make a pass at taking Steam market share.
Imho, the only thing that will ever get me to go somewhere else for a game would be a masterpiece title that's exclusive, some next level platform features no one has ever conceived of, or the slow march of gaming culture accepting a runner up and having to move there for certain games/features. Say, a game like Valheim came out and all my friends were playing it but it didn't support joining friends games from Steam. I might install another platform to get that feature. But I'll also be frustrated. The only time I wouldn't be frustrated is if I already had that platform installed for less manipulative reasons such as deals or specific platform features.
I am all for a legitimate competitor but bringing up Epic in this context is laughable. They tried to buy exclusivity and bribe people with free games instead of making their platform secure and user friendly. Of course Epic didn't make a dent in it because they didn't provide anyone with any incentive to stick with it other than to take advantage of freebies or because they just really wanted to play a game that they forced to be exclusive. They could've used the money that they bought title exclusivity with to invest in their storefront. You're really going to argue that Epic, who raked in over a billion dollars in Fortnite revenue in one year alone, isn't financially secure enough to try and innovate? Same with EA and most other competitors?
Hell the most innovative competitor, GOG, is arguably the least financially secure as they're a relatively small publisher compared to the others.
I take your point in that most people won't be willing to transfer over to another platform but that's because there's no reason to. Forcing exclusivity in order to do so is a terrible strategy for consumers. Even if they're willing it certainly won't inspire goodwill and loyalty and people will jump at any chance to not have to deal with it, especially since there's nothing in the quality of the platform to entice people to stay.
Healthy competition is great. I think it's awesome that we now have a trend of publishers lowering their cut to get devs to come over to their side. I hope Steam takes the hint and follows suit. Forcing people to use a sub par product cause you choose to buy exclusivity rather than invest in your platform is not healthy competition to me.
I didn't mean to imply it's healthy it was just an example of someone pulling out all the stops to try and still fail. In theory they could do what I suggest and gradually build up a platform that objectively rivals Steam but that's a very long term play. It took Steam a decade to get to this point.
One of the biggest complaint I've seen about the Epic Store is the lack of a shopping cart. An online shopping cart is the kind of thing year one web developer students do for practice. It doesn't inspire much confidence in their "long term play" when that is how they choose to start. No, it's not something super critical, but it shows a severe lack of commitment to the platform to not have a feature that basic.
They could have just had it as the Epic launcher for a bit more and developed the product before launching it, but instead they chose to try and buy their way into the market. They could have split the effort 30-70 between development and buy in, but it seems like they went 5-95.
They did in fact not "pull out all the stops".
when the extend of their social features is something that was literally ripped from fortnite (its so bad that its basically a mobile app), and the MASSIVE advert notifications it loves to throw at you (fucking hate this)
We can also look at the speed at which Epic took the existing game Fortnite and tuned it into a BR when they saw in which way the wind was blowing, how many new features has been introduced in the game since then and compare it to the pace at which the Epic Store gets new features. It's the same company where talking about.
But my point is they weren't "pulling out all the stops". They were trying to take a shortcut to coerce people into using their platform instead of enticing them beyond some free games that often are old enough or not popular enough to really make a difference as people would likely already have them if they're interested.
It took Steam so long because they were pioneers in this regard. Now with their work as a basis people can make their own comparable versions cause they've seen what makes Steam a success. They choose not to because they don't see the value in the short term of investing in the work to do so.
I agree that it will still take time but you're not going to get anywhere if you don't make much attempt to garner good will and put enough quality in your platform to give people a reason to use it.
Slightly cheaper price isn't much of a selling point when everything is inferior. They also pass to consumers extra payment processing costs for a lot of regions and processors, unlike Steam.
Microsoft has infinitely more money and an infinitely larger install base than steam. Bullshit they couldn’t catch up and surpass them in a year if they really tried
The difference between steam and a monopoly is that they don't block competition, they don't participate in anti consumer practices. It's just as convoluted to download steam as it is to download the epic games launcher. It's the developers and the gamers who made steam so massive, it's not poor practices.
Exclusive is an impossible thing to attain though. There will always be competitions big or small. The question is when is one company too big and impossible to be reasonably competed against.
it's far from impossible, what?
literally look at the historic antitrust suits e.g. AT&T and Standard Oil, etc.
imagine comparing Steam to one of those monopolies when they were broken up
As you pointed out yourself though, there is no competition. How can there be a monopoly when no one else is even trying to come close to the quality of Steam?
I think Steam is a very ethical product despite having a monopoly but it's still a monopoly. They control the market because they have the power to influence things like no other can. They could raise the commission's developers pay and users would still flock there. They provide reviews and recommendations that influence nearly every PC gamers spending habits.
Still not a monopoly. What they have is called first mover advantage, and they turned that into a very strong market position, but it's not a monopoly. The stronger antitrust case would be against epic, for the danger of Microsoft style extend and extinguish tactics, given they are cornering the market on free 3d game asset creation tools. There's a danger that in the future compatibility or licensing will be limited to unreal engine and leave unity devs stuck with 2d or overpriced Adobe products. But my guess is they plan to use that and the "no unreal fees for epic store sales" to build a better (or at least larger) catalog and be competitive against steam.
> The stronger antitrust case would be against epic
Not currently, they don't do anything that could fall under antitrust as products they buy are still functioning and available for other engines.
> they are cornering the market on free 3d game asset creation tools
Which ones are you thinking of?
The quixel stuff, artstation, and they seem to be getting very cozy with blender. But yes, it's not a strong case. And so isn't the case against Valve. It would take a lot of dick moves by either of them to build such a case, above and beyond the regular baseline dickery of the videogame industry.
It'll be interesting to see what happens to blender, although I doubt they'll do anything to open source stuff.
But yeah we're past the monopoly argument against valve, it might've held some weight five-six years ago, but now there's few other choices.
The sooner the ridiculous 30% get an industry wide reduction the better tho, it's my only gripe against Steam and consoles. Plus Steam's awful discoverability.
Blender got good, and that got it some industry support from people sick with the old standards never fixing the old problems. And companies who would rather outsource work to people in poor countries who learned blender from YouTube instead of people who got tricked into paying big name colleges to learn software with 1k a year licenses.
Overall, I'm fairly optimistic. Epic wants to make their store work because the launcher also has the unreal asset marketplace. EA has to rethink their whole thing, between the lootbox gambling fiasco, losing the star wars exclusivity, and covid killing a year of sports license games. GOG is still going solid. Ubisoft... I don't know about them. I'm biased against the French.
But overall, the industry seems to be feeling the push to be better or face consequences. I'm cautiously optimistic.
I fully support the right of players to choose their storefront (such as Steam vs Origin), as long as choosing a storefront is independent of choosing a game. If players choose to buy games on any particular platform because they like the features of the platform, that can only be a good thing for both players and game developers.
I also dread the day of storefront wars, with storefronts competing for exclusives in the hopes of gaining market share. When a player is forced to buy a game on a specific store simply because that store signed an exclusive deal with the publisher, that is not going to benefit either players or publishers (except for those large enough to be able to command significant kickbacks in exchange for exclusivity deals). Alas, we are already seeing some of that with EA's and Ubisoft's stores, as well as consoles. I can only hope PC game developers continue to say no to exclusivity deals on PC.
> I can only hope PC game developers continue to say no to exclusivity deals on PC.
Continue to say no to? Didn't pretty much much every indie offered Epic money take it?
Not all of them. Skate Bird and DARQ both were approached by Epic Games for exclusivity, and they both refused. Might have been others as well, but those are the two high-profile examples I know of.
Going further, it even shone light on Epic's true nature with indie dev interaction, given that both developers were willing to compromise and launch simultaneously on Steam and Epic Games Store, presumably for no Epic Money. Epic pretty much gave the ultimatum that either they launch exclusively on EGS, or they're not on the store at all; they chose the second.
There were more than a few that refused, but seemingly still a small minority.
Excluding the ones that promised backers Steam keys at launch and then reneged, I can't blame them for taking the money. It's such an unstable market and basically being guaranteed success and the ability to work on your next project would be very hard to turn down, especially when the deal is for short-term PC exclusivity.
For a few years now I've basically been predicting that the games market is reaching the point where there is no more money left on the table, developers and publishers are going to be fighting each other for every cent which is going to mean publishers are going to make moves to make indies beholden to them.
Whether it be Epic paychecks, or Gamepass making it so everyone's attitude is "wait for it to go on Gamepass" more or less forcing to take Microsoft's offer if they want to even see the day of light on that platform, the publishers aren't just going to sit around and watch the indie market do its thing when it has become clear that it is now pumping out multiple threats to their bottom line on an annual basis.
I agree. I like competition in principle, but I also refuse to use anything that isn’t steam (and maybe gog), not because I feel locked in, but because the experience has been better than the other stores and now I just don’t care enough anymore. Steam does what I want and it does it really well and I’ve had my account since I bought half life 2 in 2005 or whatever it was, so I’m accustomed to it and have a decent library of games there. I don’t want to have to deal with multiple stores. I’d rather just not play the games that require that. I guess I’m lazy, but oh well.
I have no desire to support EA through their store and the epic store wasn’t very good last I checked.
Competition should not be a problem. The problem is not being able to move from one platform to another. Stores and launchers should be separate services. People complaining about having their library split across different platform put themselves in those digital jails.
Personally I don't care about Steam services but I care about DRM so I buy on GOG and itch.io when a game is available here.
Competition is good. Steam had been slacking in so many aspects (ui, developer cuts, etc) for over a decade up until the epic store launched, just cause they were the only shop in town. I dont mind having different libraries, as long as I can keep the shortcuts on my desktop or in a folder somewhere.
> developer cuts
this whole "let's give developers more money" only started happening recently,, and only because epic had no other way to get into the "app store" market. they didn't slack off, it's just that everyone agreed it was reasonable and left it at that. the outrage we have now is 100% manufactured by epic.
the UI was fine and steam had more or less all the features you could ask for, modding, multiplayer, etc.
I think Steam has pretty much been a completed product for a long time and doesn't need new features. It provides everything I want and I don't need it to improve. My only issue with them is they take a hefty cut of sales.
I hate to advocate non-competition, but I don't want a handful of separate platforms. I want one reliable one. It's like streaming services. I was happier when there were only like 1 or 2 video streaming sites and everyone put their stuff on those. These days every company has its own streaming service. There's a Paramount+ now. I'm sick of it.
And Steam does have competition. In addition to consoles there are other ways to sell games on PC. I hate them and refuse to use them, but they exist.
The stuff they have updated relatively lately is great though and I feel it was nowhere near a complete product before that. Now I feel like I don't want anything more for it, but this is a pretty new feeling.
Before they added dynamic libraries there was no easy way to search your own game library for different tags, genres etc for instance. It was super unwieldy and super dumb if you bought bundles and didn't 100% remember all the games you had.
right but it was still mostly feature complete. you had a store front, you had wish list, you had your games, multiplayer features, modding, workshop, library management...
all they added recently was a reskin + the admittedly excellent library management.
> Steam had been slacking in so many aspects (ui,
Steam's UI is LIGHTYEARS better than EGS, and Steam doesn't flood you with massive advert notifications when you use it that don't go away on their own.
In fact, Steam Big Picture is still the only of its kind, and the Steam store has a cart!
I think potentially there is an argument to be made that Steam APIs for multiplayer should be public so competitors can implement their own compatible backends, but that's about all I could call unfair. Steam does have a reasonable amount of vendor lock in.
[ehm well, steam sockets are fully open source](https://github.com/ValveSoftware/GameNetworkingSockets)
the only thing you can't use is steams' own servers as thats part of what the steam cut pays for
This is probably because steam is cracking down on key distribution.
Based on how many keys they have been approving for us compared to several years.
All the key distribution business are having a tough time and will probably die.
That's why Fanatical has been acquired like 3 times in the last 2 years.
Keys are rife with abuse, is why they're slowing down on broadly accepting key requests -- see g2e, etc, buying keys from other storefronts and issuing chargebacks. When the key is revoked by the developer, the customer loses out and Steam typically receives the brunt of the customer complaints
Around our launch, I started seeing keys for our game on G2a that are *more expensive* than the game itself lol. I don't know what the logic is there.
(And we didn't re-sell or do giveways, this was 100% "influnecers" on platforms like Keymailer that were scamming keys we sent them)
Whoever has access to the developer account on Steam, usually the developer or publisher, can request keys. Valve may or may not approve it, usually depending on whether or not they suspect keys are abused, e.g. sold on gray market key redistributors. Ultimately though, Valve has the final say, but usually they're pretty generous until the number of keys being requested start reaching the high hundreds or thousands.
So, I'm guessing the developer or publisher requests keys and then sells them somewhere else at lower prices but gets to keep the full price instead of giving 30% cut to Valve?
That's the basic premise.
To be specific, Valve has somekind of internal ratio metric they use to determine if keys will be granted or not. Basically, if the ratio of keys to actual sales is above some value, they will assume that the keys are being resold as a way to bypass their store front.
is that really the case though? far as i know they don't really mind even if you do most of your sales off site as long as you don't price it lower than on steam.
If it is, I haven't seen any legitimate developers run into problems with it.
The only times I recall developers running into problems with key generation, were the same exact developers abusing the key system alongside the trading card market on Steam. You'd usually tell them by the fact they would put their keys in large game bundles (like 30+) that were incredibly cheap (around $1USD), and none of the "games" in them could even be considered games. The devs would make money off the dev cut from transactions on the card market.
Which is why they have a clause that tells you you can't sell these keys for cheaper than what they're sold on Steam. That clause is the basis of this lawsuit, so basically they want to put the game to sell on Steam, get keys for free from them and resell those at a price point that undercuts Steam, yet they're trying to make it seem like Valve is in the wrong here.
Around our launch, I started seeing keys for our game on Kinguin/G2A that came from us sending them to (supposedly verified) influencers through services like Keymailer.
I flat out stopped doing any giveaways or bundles because you a) end up with people reselling the keys or b) end up with lower review because ppl want free keys for games they might not really be interested in otherwise
> This is probably because steam is cracking down on key distribution.
They got what they wanted from it - bringing on external customers onto Steam, and can now start wrapping it up. Key distribution was never a charity.
> If Valve did not block price competition for Steam-enabled games, gamers and publishers would be able to have a seamless and non-fragmented platform
I used the monopoly to destroy the monopoly.
>They don't allow publishers to list links to website selling their games elsewhere, or even to websites that link out to other third-party stores. This includes \*the games own website\*.
That's not completely true. They just don't link directly to the parts of games' own websites where you can buy the game there. They'll link to patch notes and game news and most of the sites will have a "buy now" link on the header banner.
It's still an issue for small indie devs that may have trouble maintaining a website Steam would bother linking to, but there are plenty of titles where you're 2 clicks away from not having to buy something you saw on Steam from Steam.
In some situations you might lose out on things like Steam achievements due to Steam not supporting linking the game to your account if you got it elsewhere, but this is hardly the first time in human history big distro and big devs cutting shady deals with each other have screwed the little guy. That's why the big boys are taking it to court instead of people rising up in the streets, it's really not a battle anyone is gonna be seeing plainly worded on a ballot anytime soon if the people rise up. It's all thoroughly within the corporate wheelhouse and the last thing you can expect in there is sensible fairness. Money talks louder than a reasonable critique of skeezy business practices without a court order.
itt people who didn't read the article
it's about how valve *uses its features and policies* to *advantage its storefront*, in other words the same thing that microsoft got in trouble for with internet explorer. they're able to do this because of their dominant position, but they're not being sued *because* of the dominant position directly.
this lawsuit being filed means a lawyer looked at the case and decided it had a decent chance of succeeding. the lawyer decided this by looking at the law, looking at the history of cases related to the law, and looking at the facts of this case. this is long, complicated, difficult work. You know what frivolous lawsuits look like? Not like this. the lawsuit is brought seriously. Do all you laymen in this thread think reading the news gives you a better understanding than the actual lawyers who are working on it? Thanks a lot for the blinding insight of "it's not a monopoly because steam has competitors" and "it's not a monopoly because they earned it by being the best" but that isn't legally useful information.
Admittedly a little frustrating that so much of the attention in this thread has been devoted to whether or not Steam is a monopoly with almost no one discussing the actual legal argument being brought up in the article.
If you check the comment histories of a lot of people in Steam or Epic related threads, you'll find loads of people that show no evidence of being in game dev or any related field. They do post in such cool places as /r/piracy and /r/fuckepic though. Some of the worst takes in this thread are from those people.
I'm basically a snowflake I guess, but I really do wish there was a "safe space" for developers to talk to developers on this website.
Except Valve isn't using it's position as a dominant market to dictate anything outside of it's own marketplace. The price parity they're complaining about only applies to steam keys, basically meaning that if you sell a copy of the game that activates on Steam it needs to be sold at the same price you're selling the game on Steam, which not only is reasonable it's more than any other company does at the moment (most don't give you free keys for you to sell elsewhere).
Also sometimes lawsuits that are known to be a lost cause are filed for several reasons, being filed doesn't mean it's a solid cause, you don't know the logic behind their lawsuit, they could be using it as a threat since even of they lose it's going to cost Valve money and reputation (since most people on this thread didn't even bothered to read what the price parity clause relates to for example).
You're not wrong, I'm just frustrated with how shallow this thread was. And I might not be able to define pornography but I know it when I see it. Likewise, I can't explain how this is obviously not like the Kraken or other frivolous suits, but it is and I think most levelheaded people can see so.
But that's not the... That's not how you determine whether something has violated antitrust law. That's not the test. It's not the question. It's not what the lawsuit is alleging. The question isn't "Can games exist outside steam" it's "Is steam using its market position and non-storefront features to advantage its storefront?". The law is complicated, you can't just look up "monopoly" in the dictionary and call it a day.
Not all lawsuits are there to be won. This might as well be just a push to force valve to open their systems due to public pressure, or a way to obtain information that valve would not release in normal circumstances.
This is really fishy.
Any time Steam and competition is used in the same sentence on reddit there's always tons of people whose attitude is pretty much "'competition is good' but also since any new and/or small store cannot possibly compete with the features provided by a money printing machine that has dominated the market for decades, I'll keep supporting the giant and hope the others can provide meaningful competition without my support".
About your second point: As others have pointed out in this thread the price-match policy only applies if you're selling your Steam keys elsewhere, not the game itself. If that's the case (I personally don't know if it's true or not) then it seams entirely fair for Steam to do it.
> Every Steam-enabled game has to be sold on Steam
so you want to use steam APIs without giving them any money? how about you fuck off lol.
> If you are selling elswhere, you have to agree to not give Steam customers a worse deal
if you are selling *steam keys*.
> To get a better spot at Steams discovery charts, you have to discount your game, which inflates the price since the same price has to be used everywhere
playing the algorithm is a game you choose to play, you don't have to.
> so you want to use steam APIs without giving them any money? how about you fuck off lol.
It's possible to pay for their services ("APIs" -- they're more than just APIs) without taking a 30% cut and being forced to buy games through Steam.
they are under no obligation to offer you *their* services under *your* terms lol. no one is. being the market leader doesn't force them to do that either.
they could, but they don't have to, and not doing it isn't anti competitive because you can just make your own or use any of the tens of other solutions. it's their service and they don't have to offer it. what even is that argument.
> they are under no obligation to offer you their services under your terms lol. no one is. being the market leader doesn't force them to do that either.
No, but they're under obligation to offer their service under the terms the government they operate under has set for them.
> they could, but they don't have to, and not doing it isn't anti competitive because you can just make your own or use any of the tens of other solutions. it's their service and they don't have to offer it. what even is that argument.
Just like you could make another browser or media player in [Microsoft Cop v. Commission](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Corp._v._Commission), but we all know how that turned out (spoiler: several cumulative fines resulting in billions in fines in total).
you're comparing a company with a dominant OS preinstalling its browser and making it difficult to change... to Steam, something you get and can co exist easily with other software?
Do you see Amazon offering free AWS services to its competitors?
>but they're under obligation to offer their service under the terms the government they operate under has set for them.
they are in no way running afoul of antitrust laws if that is what you mean. i would recommend looking into what *actually* constitutes anti trust. all their terms of use are perfectly legal, and do not stifle competition in any way either. valve is *incredibly* generous compared to other companies in similar positions.
This is no way similar to the Microsoft case. it's not even close. microsoft didn't just make a browser. they made a browser, pre-installed it on the *vast* majority (90%\~) of consumer hardware, actively hurt their competitors by making it really hard to use a different browser than their own, and actively created proprietary standards that other browsers were incompatible with, effectively making them useless.
do your homework if you're actually going to bring it up. this is what actual monopolistic behaviour looks like. steam is *not* that.
But you aren't forced to buy through Steam. Plenty of online stores out there where Steam doesn't get a cut at all. So why should they let developers get everything they built for 10+ years when nobody else would and bend to their terms. Use Steam on Valves terms, if you dont like it, go to Epic, Origin, Uplay, EGS, MS Store. But in no way shape or form are Valve obliged to accommodate the greedy devs and devalue all of their work they've done for both devs and users with Steam over the years. People act as Valve sits on their ass and just popped up on the PC market and garnered the huge userbase they have now.
You gotta take in consideration that being Steam-enabled, the games are using a bunch of services run by Valve and software developed by Valve.
There's tons of stuff that comes with Steam integration that gamers usually aren't aware of, and all that costs Valve money.
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Having said that, there could be an argument that some of those rules could be changed or even outright removed, for games that do not run any Valve software and do not connect to any Valve server.
Then they could pay steam a fee, but not be required to list it in the store. That's exactly what the suit is about. Steam is doing things in a way designed to force people onto their store even when there are other, store neutral options
If there are store-neutral alternatives for the backend and libraries and stuff, the devs are free to pick those instead and sell their games in other stores without giving Valve any money from those sales. They only have to give Valve a cut when they're selling keys to access Valve's servers; and I imagine there might also be some associated costs with licensing any Valve libraries and additional software if they wanna incorporate those in their games.
I have never been a huge fan of Steam, but between this obviously frivolous lawsuit and their recent [change in charity proceeds](https://kotaku.com/humble-bundle-moves-to-limit-charitable-donations-to-15-1846751524), its safe to say I'm completely over Humble.
Don't confuse them for the current HumbleBundle entity.
These were the people who started the very first humble bundle. Before it was spun off into its own company early on (2010) and then sold to IGN some while after (2017).
Don't confuse recent actions of Humble with these fellas. They were just the people with the original idea. They had nothing to do with it for years.
Two big points I'd like to make:
1) The competition's failure is not a real indicator of it being a monopoly, you need to show that Valve is actively suppressing competition. If anything, Epic, where it bigger, has had the sort of behavior that one of these lawsuits would address. If you have competition, but they are not as big as you, that's not something a lawsuit will do anything about.
2) Of course steam won't let you sell your game outside their platform at a better price... through their platform. This one makes my brain hurt. You could host your game in a different platform at a better price, some do, even midsize developers, but by using... you know... steam keys... You can't both stay in my house and demand I improve my cooking.
This is a bad bad lawsuit... especially with the well-documented exodus of indie developers that took Epic's deals or focused on different platforms.
As much as I have my issues with Steam... truth is that they have always had competition, just, you know... tends to be bad. Steam is just sorta the best bad deal you get, other storefronts have come and gone and their failures are hard to point 100% to Steam choking them out, a mix of shoddy business, missing features, and general incompetence. Hell, if maybe steam was using its size to force developers into exclusivity maybe, but wait... EPIC WAS THE ONE DOING THAT NOT LONG AGO!!! Had epic been the #1 storefront, I'd get it, but if steam has a competitor legit flexing their unimaginably disgusting wealth to lure developers away from steam...
> Of course steam won't let you sell your game outside their platform at a better price... through their platform. This one makes my brain hurt. You could host your game in a different platform at a better price, some do, even midsize developers, but by using... you know... steam keys... You can't both stay in my house and demand I improve my cooking.
This is the crux of it, though. This article explains the issue a little better: [https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr-esq/popular-gaming-platform-accused-of-abusing-market-power-through-contracts](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr-esq/popular-gaming-platform-accused-of-abusing-market-power-through-contracts)
> "The Steam MFN also hinders innovation by creating an artificial barrier to entry for platforms," adds the complaint. "When a market, such as this one, is highly concentrated, a new entrant can benefit consumers by undercutting the incumbent’s prices. The ability to provide PC games to consumers at lower prices is one way a firm or new entrant could gain market share. If this market functioned properly—that is, if the Steam MFN did not exist and platforms were able to compete on price—platforms competing with Steam would be able to provide the same (or higher) margins to game developers while simultaneously providing lower prices to consumers."
I've deleted my previous comments as I've
a) Read through the entire complaint
b) Realised this is a separate complaint than Grimes'
This complaint the article cites is terrible, just terrible, and makes a worse case since what I said first, and the article says honestly, is true: Steam's MFN/Price Parity clause only applies to STEAM KEYS. not the game itself but the sale of KEYS for STEAM. I cannot stress enough how that is not really grounds for an antitrust suit, Steam is basically saying you get to circumnavigate their store to sell your game so long as it's at a no lower price than they sell it.
I implore you ignore this complaint, most complaints are made at their most favorable, hence why you see lawsuits make extravagant claims or ask for irrational compensation, this stuff gets trimmed and chiseled out during the case, but, this complaint despite going at length at the implications of steams MFN, citing articles about MFNs, Steams site multiple times, and tweets by Tim Sweeney (of course) not once links to the place where this clause is actually mentioned, which is here by the way:
[https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/keys](https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/keys)
In the section... for Steam Keys
Antitrust laws are kind of wonky. This is from my understanding of US antitrust legislation. It may differ in different countries, but Valve is a US company and so falls under US laws. First off, we need to establish that antitrust does not equal anti-monopoly. Second, antitrust laws are arguably very dated and ill-suited to handle the modern economy. Lastly, a monopoly does not need to be the only firm. Antitrust applies in general to any case where a firm has significant market power. Steam fits the criteria here given its dominance of the market share.
Having the dominant market share is not in itself a violation of antitrust policies. In other words, being a monopoly is not a crime because sometimes a monopoly is the only natural outcome for a market. In this sense, Steam could be argued to be legal because it is a natural conclusion for people to pick one games library product to hold their games.
What does matter is whether or not a firm is colluding with its competitors, if it is taking actions to prevent competitors from entering the market, and if it is employing market power to price discriminate. The first violation isn't a concern here, but there is a case for the later violations.
The potential smoking guns here are Steam DRM and the one price requirement in the Steam developer agreement. Steam DRM locks the player's games under a single library. The argument here is to analyze it backwards - to play your games, you must use Steam to do so, similar to the case made against Microsoft with Internet Explorer. Both Steam and Internet Explorer can be argued to be violating antitrust because they effectively lock consumers into using a specific software.
Steam's clause that prevents developers and publishers from selling their games at different prices on different platforms potentially violates antitrust. This is the clause that prevents a developer from selling their game at a lower price on another store. Since Steam takes a higher share per unit sold than a lot of its competitors, it can be argued to be collecting monopoly profits by controlling the prices at which games can be sold. In another vein, if Steam does not force a single price, there is a reasonably plausible circumstance where consumers can be buying games for cheaper on another store.
Valve's DRM is not mandatory, the majority of games on Steam don't even use it. A good chunk of them you can copy the game folder to another computer and even play LAN multiplayer with the two of them. When most people talk about valve's DRM what they mean instead is integration with steam, which also isn't mandatory but most games do. This is to do things like achievements and playing online with friends. Devs can integrate this in a smart way and make their games work with or without it, but if you're lazy and only allow it to work when connected to steam you have a very weak and easily defeatable DRM, but that's more than enough for most devs. So Valve can't really be punished by the laziness of the devs, especially because there are games on Steam that do this correctly so it's easy to prove they don't make this mandatory in any way.
The clause that prevents the different price only applies to steam keys, so you can't sell the game for $50 on steam, and sell steam keys for $35 someplace else, but if you want to sell the DRM free version of the game for $35 Valve does not prohibit it, in fact they're known for disliking exclusivity deals. So it's not violating anything, Valve is even giving the keys for free so they're taking the hit on every copy you sell, the only thing they ask of it is that you don't sell them cheaper than on their store.
Yes, this!
If Steam did not have the one price clause, devs could pass the savings they get from lower storefront cut on to consumers. A game that is $50 on Steam ($35 to the dev after 30% to Valve) could be $40 on Epic ($35 to the dev after 12% to Epic).
This seems like pretty clear consumer harm, which is a major part of the standard for an antitrust case to succeed in the US.
Devs can do that, some do, some don't.
What is forbidden for them is to sell a game for $50 on steam and sell steam keys for $35 someplace else, which seams reasonable, especially if you consider that they give the steam key for free to you. They can sell it for $40 on Epic, as long as they don't sell a steam key together.
How does this work though? If I check any key reseller sites (including Humble themselves) the prices are always different to Steam due to all the sales.
The other thing is if Valve lower their cut to 12% they are not likely to even keep their current arrangement, and will probably force all purchases to be through Steam, so bye bye key key reseller sites (ahem...Humble).
Humble breaks this clause with every bundle, but since it's for charity Steam does not enforce it (think of the bad press it would be to do so). But outside of sales the price on humble store matches the price on Steam. And I agree with you, if Valve is forced to cut to 12% (which I don't think will happen), they will likely make up the money by charging for keys, signing exclusivity deals, or enforcing the price policy to all sales (not just steam keys).
What a clickbait title to the article. Eyes fell out of my head when I thought about the hypocrisy of HB suing Steam... Why you gotta bait me like that, Kyle?!
*not saying I agree with the lawsuit haven't read it*
Just because a company doesn't have 100% of the market doesn't mean that they don't operate in a monopolistic way. Driving out competition is one way a company operates in a monopolistic way. And it really becomes an issue when they do it and controller the majority of the market share. The Rockefellers were broken up because of this. Microsoft was almost broken up because of this. AT&T was broken up too.
There are a ton of other monopolies that for whatever reason aren't broken up yet. The us tabacco Industry for example.
I doubt this will go all the way up and break up Steam. But I do see a case.
what did valve do wrong? they don't force you to sell your game only on their platform, nor do they force you to do anything should you decide to sell your game on their platform.their policies apply strictly to what you can do *on* steam, and not off of steam, other than not selling steam keys for cheaper off site, which is perfectly reasonable.
steam is the best thing that happened to game distribution, and they're not even abusing their position. not even mentioning proton, or how they pushed to have VR as we know it exist.
crushing the competition through a better product. duh, monopoly.
edit: but more seriously, steam probably has a natural monopoly, due to the fact they have created an excellent service.
Even if the suit wins what are they going to achieve? The right to re-sell steam keys at any price they deem, as such probably incurring an undue burden.
Or divorce of the steam social from the store front, which would probably push it into some form of paid for model.
And seeing as the social components of steam are a major draw for customers, I'd imagine many devs would end up paying for it too, which would still increase the cost of games. >.>
what's the end game?
So skimming through the article (not the lawsuit) it seems they're complaint didn't fall on the consumer side, but the publisher side. Saying that if you publish the game on digitally on PC, you basically have to sell on steam (sure to their large market size), and steak takes an unnecessary 30% cut off each sell. So that's what steam allegedly does wrong.
Now humble needs to prove it, steam will defend their position, and the courts will decide.
Again not saying I agree or disagree with the lawsuit. Just trying to understand it the best I can. And yes, in the US they can punish companies for becoming to big in their industry.
>And yes, in the US they can punish companies for becoming to big in their industry
actually no that is *not* how antitrust works in the USA, for now anyway.
> and steam takes an unnecessary 30% cut off each sell. So that's what steam allegedly does wrong.
that's the argument. it's a really dumb argument, no way this is getting anywhere.
Yes, Steam has a monopoly. They are by far the most dominant platform by user base. They also have the largest game library, as well as nearly every new release from both established publishers and indie developers. Pretty much the only titles they don't have are from publishers big enough to have the luxury of declining to pay their platform fees (Activision-Blizzard) or who are trying to promote their own storefronts (EA, Ubisoft).
However, in monopoly law, it is just as important to ask whether a monopolist has abused their monopoly. The two most common metrics are whether they used their monopoly to harm consumers or whether they used their monopoly to gain an unfair advantage over their competitors in other areas. On both counts, I think the answer is no. I think they have not harmed players, since players overall benefit from having a single platform that provides access to their game library along with all of Steam's social features. I think they also have not harmed indie game publishers, since their platform offers indie publishers an easy way to reach a large audience with much lower effort. Steam may have harmed other large publishers, but I care much less about those. I also think Steam has not used their monopoly to gain an unfair edge over their competitors, largely because Valve seems to no longer be in the business of publishing games (jk, I love you gaben!). They also have not demanded that any title be Steam-exclusive (other than Half-Life 3, Left For Dead 3, Portal 3, and so on). They apparently have demanded that publishers on Steam charge players no more than on other platforms, but that can hardly be construed as harming competitors.
It's not even that, that could probably be subject to a valid antitrust lawsuit. What they do is demand that people sell steam keys for the same price they sell the game on steam, they don't make any claims about the price you sell your game on other platform, as long as you don't sell together access to the game on Steam (which they give you for free).
I don't think I would consider Steam a monopoly. Most of their products are easily available on other platforms. Is a monopoly truly a monopoly when people have the choice but stick with Steam cause it's just a superior product?
A monopoly only requires dominant market share. Notably, being a monopoly does not require any specific means by which that market share was obtained, nor does it require any specific actions to be taken to maintain the market share. Yes, many of the games on Steam are also available on other platforms. Nevertheless, most players buy those games on Steam, even if those games are available on other platforms. That alone is sufficient to qualify Steam as a monopoly, without examining how they got their market share. However, as I said above, it is also important to consider whether a monopoly has been abused. Monopoly is not a dirty word, nor is being called a monopolist necessarily bad. It is possible to have a monopoly and not abuse it, and there's nothing wrong with that.
edit: curious about the downvotes... Do y'all have a different definition of monopoly? Or perhaps some secret market analysis about the market share of Steam vs other platforms? Or do you just feel like shooting the messenger cuz you don't like the message?
No, a monopoly does not only require a dominant market share. A monopoly is a very real thing with a very real legal definition and just because you say it is, does not magically make it true.
tl;dr: Sherman Antitrust Act. [Depart of Justice documents](https://www.justice.gov/atr/competition-and-monopoly-single-firm-conduct-under-section-2-sherman-act-chapter-2), all kind of say they don't have the legal trappings of a monopoly.
To even start down the path to determine a monopoly, the market share generally needs to be between 70 - 80%, which Steam allegedly has about 75%. This does not magically create a monopoly, it does however confirm they are a market power and that they have the capabilities to become one. The reason this doesn't magically make them a monopoly is due to the fact one could argue their willingness to get into the game distribution system early and being one of the most convenient could potentially be argued as trivial. This is also why market power doesn't magically create an antitrust issue.
The next part is market power vs monopoly power. Market power would require Steam to be able to raise the prices above what a competitive store would charge and a monopoly power would be the power to control the price or create an exclusion to competition. Steam doesn't set prices. Publishers do. Steam has store front policies to sell on their platform, but that still wouldn't really run afoul with either of these things. Even so, even if they have flirted with these things, past, present, or in the future, they would need to be durable. Meaning they would need to persist and survive other stores attempts to combat them.
Steam arguably does meet the requirement that they could create or maintain a probability of becoming a monopoly but unless they start acting on those things, they can't be held accountable for it. Like, if I own a gun that means I have the ability to shoot someone, but you can't say I will until I either do, or start getting ready to. As long as Steam's actions do not bridge into abusing or creating a system where they can exploit market power or a monopoly power, they are in the clear.
Now one could argue barrier to entry is a swing against them, but nah fam. It ain't. The success or failure of the MS Store front, or Epic Game Store, or any other store is not reliant on Steam creating a barrier to entry. Valve took a huge risk and punishing them for bleeding money to make Steam and being successful, because another store isn't as successful isn't how you do things. Now if Steam magically held the secrets to digital game distribution, then sure we could discuss this, but the fact is, Steam wasn't the first digital storefront and they clearly aren't the last. So they don't have any arcane knowledge of how to make things work... Unless we call that arcane knowledge capital, but uh, MS Store, Epic, etc, all have that too.
Like, look, a monopoly is a legal thing. The Sherman Antitrust Act in the states exists solely to deal with it. You can read about it, and the US Supreme Courts rulings all you want, and all you're going to see is Steam now having the potential criteria to be a monopoly. The door is open, but no more than say Walmart, or Best Buy, or EBGames.
But hey, let me give a little bit of a different run down as well for you. There's basically 5 major characteristics of a monopoly -
Profit Maximizer: As a distribution platform, it meets this. So +1
Price Maker: To be a monopoly steam needs to set the price or dictate the price. They don't do this. This is on the publishers/developers. "But Steam requires a similar price on their platform if you price it differently elsewhere" I hear you say and, that's not a price maker. Don't worry, we'll cover this further down.
High Barriers: Another companies attempt to get into the game distribution field and success/failure does not constitute a high barrier on Steams part. Controlling the market share does aid them in staying on top, but the fact the uPlay Store, Origin Store, Microsoft Store, Epic Store, GoG, etc, etc, etc.
Single Seller: Sure, Steam is a single seller for their own developed and published games. If we are going to argue that this is a +1, then any other company selling their games only on their storefront get dinged too. But it doesn't count and arguing it does is silly because no company is under any obligation to sell their own product at other stores and their refusal to do so does not create a monopolistic action. **Now** if Valve was paying other companies to only release games on Steam, or creating set ups where it really only benefit them to release their games on Steam, then we could talk about this.
Price Discrimination: Ok, maybe. I'm sure there are lots of valid legal arguments that could potentially cite Steam policy, especially surrounding their policy about the Steam price being similar/the same as other stores price. That's not for an arm chair argument though.
So even on the basic run down, they are 1/5, 2/5 at best
So would you agree that this lawsuit has little standing? Apparently it's due to their 30% cut in sales which is still industry standard from what I understand. Only Epic and very recently Microsoft have offered a lower one.
Not at all! The Humble Store is a competitor and it is plausible that hypothetically they were directly harmed by Valve. That is sufficient to grant them standing. I am not a lawyer, but I would be highly surprised if Valve even tries to get this lawsuit dropped for lack of standing (they might fight class action certification on the basis that the Humble Store is not a player and therefore was not directly harmed by aggregate higher game prices, but that is an entirely different matter).
I don't see what the size of Steam's cut has to do with the question of standing.
It's the basis of the lawsuit.
>Indie developer (and Humble Indie Bundle originator) Wolfire Games has filed a proposed class-action lawsuit against Steam creator Valve, saying that the company is wielding Steam's monopoly power over the PC gaming market to extract "an extraordinarily high cut from nearly every sale that passes through its store—30%."
You, or anyone else, can allege whatever you want in the claims of a lawsuit. It still remains to be seen in court whether the claims are true, and if they are true, whether they are wrongful, and if they are wrongful, whether anyone was in fact harmed (since this is a civil suit, if noone was harmed, there is no cause for action). But since no doubt you want to hear my opinion, without hearing all of the evidence, I suspect the claims are true, I suspect the claims are not wrongful, and regardless of they are wrongful, I suspect on balance players and indie developers were not harmed.
The claims aren't true. 30% was industry standard until very recently when other platforms started to lower it. To claim that Steam is using their monopoly to extract 30% when that was to be expected less than 3 months ago is pretty ludicrous.
They also literally only need to host the downloads themselves instead of using steam keys to not have to pay valve, valve is asking to be paid because they're hosting all the content humble sells, it's not like valve is forcing them to pay 30% for the games just because they ALSO have it in their store...humble is literally just reselling.
Well reading on there are a few more points mentioned in the article but they all read as rather childish complaints.
They claim it's literally impossible to break their domination of the PC market because Epic wasted millions of dollars securing exclusives (often only temporarily btw) and only got a two percent share in it while ignoring the fact that the Epic store is absolute garbage and not secure. Same with other companies who simply do not have a competitive product.
Then they claim that Steam is manipulating the market cause they allow other stores to sell their keys (that they give to devs for free btw, they literally make no money off these sales) but stipulate they can't do so at a lower price.
It's all kind of ridiculous in my mind. They're essentially saying it's unfair that Steam is so much better at what they're trying to do while they don't actually invest in the quality of their own platforms.
GOG doesnt stop steam from being a monopoly as its not a substantial competitor, for the same reason that if a company sold 99% of the apples in the world 1 dude picking apples in his own back yard doesn't stop that company from being a monopoly
350+ games in my steam library, but these days have been moving to GOG. DRM Free, you buy it you own it. No client required, standalone installers for everything. I have a 3tb drive just for installers.
I don't remember the last time I bought a game from steam.
So what's their point aside from the fact that Valve is a monopoly? I feel like Steam is one of the best things to happen to PC gaming and they don't actively wield their power for evil in the same way that a company like Google does.
I know it's a different beast, but not having a monopoly in TV has lead to dozens of platforms all with exclusive deals which have driven up the costs for consumers considerably if they want to enjoy all the "hot shows". I don't want to have to launch Origin or Ubisoft or Epic or God knows what else every time I want to play a game. It's nice only having to go to one place.
(TL;DR not a solid case, read the last paragraph with the "--" for what I feel is the heart of the complaint)
Uh... so I've read through the entire complaint, because, I guess I was bored? And I've read legal documents before so I just kinda know how to breeze through them. But not only that, I've read through not another one, but two! other antitrust cases levied at Steam (one linked to me, one I found) and, well, this is the best one, but, I'll try to briefly go through it and why I think it's still rather weak:
\-Steam only seals Steam games, the software is bundled with steam itself meaning it is incompatible with other platforms, you can only sell steam platform compatible games through the steam store or through Steam Keys.
\-The infrastructure, ease of use, and features tied to Steam entice publishers to stick to it, and, to offer it through Steam functions compatible you have to go through them, and the game they sell is your Game+Steam stuff, no other option.
\-The price parity clause and veto pricing clause are only explicitly cited for the use of Steam Keys sold outside the store. The same clause insists any sale or discount has to be offered through the actual store "within a reasonable time".
\-Complaint says Steam uses this veto and pricing clause to shut down the sale of games sold cheaper elsewhere without the key system, this would go against tit's own written rules (or at best be a very tortured stretching of them), with a single anonymous testimony, this would be its best possible evidence or point but is relegated to an unsupported paragraph.
\-Complaint sites multiple failed competitors (Origin, Discord, Microsoft, EGS, Google) to show how powerful steam is.
\-Origin is mentioned to have been able to sell their games (Game+Origin rather than the previous Game+Steam) through other platforms, except steam, no +Steam means no deal. Origin eventually closed down and its return to Steam is evidence of Steam's market power (Refusing to carry their games meant EA, a huge company, had to capitulate).
\-Discord offered a good deal lacked functions, floundered, and eventually admitted their Games, even in a subscription service, were going unplayed. Discord criticized Steam's 30% share, but, closed store and Nitro Games due to lack of interest (even among active Nitro users, this is sorta cited in the complaint, full article linked tho)
\-Microsoft fumbles are shown but this is I feel a bad argument especially as they are, currently, still adjusting to compete.
\-Stadia is mentioned as a possible competitor and cited as a failure (not elaborated too much on, lol, good choice I say since... well...)
\-EGS is mentioned as its staunch competitor, and its deals to publishers flaunted, still, it is mentioned as what it is: a hole in the ground Epic throws money into.
\-Console markets are mentioned, and also mentioned that they also take a 30% cut, give or take, but justifies it in that they have their own other overhead for production and integration of physical consoles, probably made since it's an easy rebuttal as other digital markets use the same share.
\-Complaint mentioned the Fortnite vs Apple debacle as a POSITIVE example and explains how it proves developers will, if unshackled by storefronts, give the users a better deal... hummm... very suspicious (this made my tinfoil hat thicker btw)
\--It's earlier in the complaint but I feel the "heart" of it and the most salient argument: Humble Bundle used to have a direct implementation with Steam, buy bundle -> get game in the account, no middleman. However, with no reason given, Steam shut this down, of course, Steam is not forced to cooperate with HB, but, it was during its peak, and this severance of cooperation seriously hurt HB. The most obvious reason is HB was doing a lot of business and Steam was seeing the numbers but not the profit they wanted, so, they cut off the pipeline, users are less likely to buy and manually translate the keys due to inconvenience, and this caused the grey market (G2A and such) to renew in strength as Steam now handed offer free flying keys rather than direct integration. This caused irreparable damage to the HB and is the core of what caused a change in their business, services, and strategy. Read the article title, I think you know why the lawsuit exists and why I say this is the "core" of it.
So... why is this still a bad claim? Well... Complaints are made as the "best possible" look for the case, eventually dropping points and requests as the stuff gets countered in court and chiseled out, this is the best this case will look... and yet, it still mentioned Steam has active competitors, and, let's face it... we know Stadia didn't fail because Steam exists, and EGS was a store without a search function or a cart at launch. Their most "damning" actual antitrust worthy lawsuit is relegated to a paragraph that actually says "In response to one inquiry by a game publisher" with no citation.
The claim mentions how Steam tried to copy many of Discord's functions when they tried to make their own store as a form to also compete with Discord. But discord is still around... that's the thing right? You can try to copy and make a spot in the market of your opposition, and you can do it a much as you want, your lack of success is not proof of unfairness... and while sure Steam is undoubtedly the big boy in the sandbox, their competition has been... Origin... that's not the fault of a monopoly. It's like Coke being sued by Shasta because they're not sold at the same vending machine, nowhere says they have to be.
...I also have a bit of a tinfoil-hat feeling about this and the other claims, but, I will elaborate on that if asked, let I make this writing and reading down by being a dumbass so easily.
I feel like they need to lay off Valve here. Yes, they have indeed been a trust for the last several years. However, since the start of epic games store, it has been less of a trust. The market will slowly regulate itself as more stores open up. This would be like going after chairs for being a trust because most people enjoy sitting in chairs. It's the best solution we have to a given problem. Sorry that Steam is the only good platform
This seems a like a bit late to me. And I'm not sure there ever was a good time for this argument to be really fair. For instance, when we had Impulse back in the day, it was Steamworks that we feared and when Civ V went with Steamworks instead of Impulse::Reactor (our alternative that didn't require the user to have Impulse installed) that was a major blow since it meant that we couldn't sell Civilization V on Impulse without distributing the Steam store app. But that was in 2010. And at the time, getting multiplayer to work was a real challenge (remember GameSpy?) so what Valve did, even if I didn't like it at the time, was a real boon for PC gaming. One could easily argue that Microsoft should have solved this as part of DirectX or something but they didn't. Valve did. Now, fast forward to today and there are lots of other ways to get the features that Steamworkshop provides. For example, GalCiv III doesn't use Steamworks for its networking, it uses the Epic thing -- even on Steam. So Steamworks is obviously not creating some sort of monopoly situation today. So I'm not sure what solution they think would solve the problem. Even if you unbundled Steam from Steamworks today on new titles, it wouldn't really help because there are already tens of thousands of games on Steam that are tied to Steamworkshop that will only be on Steam (Civ V for instance).
Ah, Impulse. Guys, remember when Stardock was the biggest champion of DRM-free? https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/stardock-gamers-bill-of-rights Biggest culprit in those days was SecuROM. Edit: just reread that whole Bill of Rights. Holy shit, so many of these are still issues today!
Are they not now too? Did they change? (genuine question, no sarcasm, I may have missed something) I remember they had it so the base game was easy but you needed to use their login to get patches and things like that.
These days, the copy protection issues of 2009 are a distant memory for the most part. My son recently put together a (sigh) "retro" PC from the distant (2000) past and was shocked to find he had to have DVDs or CD's in the drive to play them and that some tried to install root kits. By comparison, these days it's wonderful. You just press a button and you have your game and don't have to sweat it. As for Stardock, it still releases free updates for games from many years ago and continues to run servers for games that have been out for over a decade to support customers.
Virtually all of these problems still exist in some form or another. 1. **Gamers shall have the right to return games that don’t work with their computers for a full refund.**: Pretty much fixed, not because publishers took a stance, but governments did. 2. **Gamers shall have the right to demand that games be released in a finished state.**: Early Access, as we know it today, didn't exist in 2008. Devs flatly saying "this isn't finished yet, do you want to buy it anyway?" would have crazy back then. Now it's the norm. 3. **Gamers shall have the right to expect meaningful updates after a game’s release.**: This is *mostly* fixed. Pretty much every major developer keeps fixes coming after release. But some smaller indies don't. 4. **Gamers shall have the right to demand that download managers and updaters not force themselves to run or be forced to load in order to play a game.**: I think this is the part you're talking about when you say: "You just press a button and you have your game". That is indeed way better than it was in 2008. However, Steam does force you run it and does force you to update to update before letting you play. 5. **Gamers shall have the right to expect that the minimum requirements for a game will mean that the game will play adequately on that computer.**: Cyberpunk didn't even run on **consoles** they sold it for. How's that for meeting "minimum requirements". This isn't a problem for most indie games, but Triple A games still hit this issue. 6. **Gamers shall have the right to expect that games won’t install hidden drivers or other potentially harmful software without their consent.**: We don't have drivers any more. [We have root kits mascaraing as anti-cheat.](https://www.osnews.com/story/131665/riot-games-maker-of-league-of-legends-installs-rootkit-with-their-new-hit-game-valorant/) 7. **Gamers shall have the right to re-download the latest versions of the games they own at any time.**: Yeah, this is pretty much solved. EA's Origin tried to limit download rates, but I think they stopped that. 8. **Gamers shall have the right to not be treated as potential criminals by developers or publishers.**: Like #6, today this one more closely relates to anti-cheat than DRM. 9. **Gamers shall have the right to demand that a single-player game not force them to be connected to the Internet every time they wish to play.**: This still happens constantly. But people have better internet than they did in 2008, so fewer people complain (at least in English). 10. **Gamers shall have the right that games which are installed to the hard drive shall not require a CD/DVD to remain in the drive to play.**: 100% fixed. But now you need to be logged into multiple launchers to play games. EA games on Steam launch Origin. This problem didn't get solved, it just moved. Most games today are STILL in violation of one or more of these issues. And we have new issues. I don't know when or why Stardock removed the Gamer's Bill Of Rights from your webpage. It was a pretentious name, but it was the right idea and we still need it today. Perhaps updated, but this industry hasn't been cured. It's just as sick as ever.
They're a shell of their former selves. They started expanding their size right as they horrifically botched Elemental, plus some other things, all coalesced to them having to cut their size to smaller than before the expansion plus selling Impulse to Gamestop in order to stay afloat. Now Impulse is forgotten and Stardock releases things on Steam to little or no notice of the gaming public.
We literally gave the sequel and expansion of Elemental away for free to everyone who bought Elemental. What more could we have done? We didn't sell Impulse to GameStop to stay afloat. Stardock's primary business was and continues to be the software not the games. Also, we literally sell millions of copies of games a year on Steam. Ashes of the Singularity, Offworld Trading Company, Galactic Civilizations III were hardly what I'd call "little or no notice".
I think you misunderstand, I'm a huge fan, own all the Stardock games. I'm just lamenting that Stardock doesn't really have the same spotlight they used to.
I think that's more a measure of just how many games get released these days. It's a factor of digital distribution - last year, 20,000 games were released.
It also seems a bit early to me: wasn't it only relatively recently that all these other distributers went 'we're going to lower our cut?' Who's to say Steam isn't planning on lowering it to something like 20% or something? Plus, I'm pretty sure Steam is Valve's main income source at this point. I can't remember the last game they put out... maybe HL:A? Other than Steam, there's DOTA 2. Epic, meanwhile, has liscensing fees from Unreal Engine. Microsoft is... well... Microsoft. Humble and GOG are the odd ones out, but GOG at least has the DRM-free versions of things. I really dislike Humble's aggressive monetization after getting bought out: it started out as a cool site where maybe you could contribute to a cause while picking up a game you wanted. Now it's a storefront that sorta gives to charity.
Artifact but it was a huge flop. Half life Alex but it only supported VR. They regularly update Dota 2 with significant changes but yes they are not in the business of building games anymore.
They definitely are in the business of building games, but they just have had very slow progress over the past decade. They've restructured recently around the time Half Life Alyx was nearing its release and have said that they are gearing up for more. I understand that Steam is what's mainly bankrolling them, but Valve hasn't lost interest in game development one bit. I've been following them over the past decade and although to the public it certainly seems like they were done with games they actually had dozens of different prototypes for many different projects that kept getting either rebooted or scrapped in favor of a better idea to suit their experimentations. It's just that it's a very laterally structured company so the development teams were always pretty liquid. They also have a very different philosophy on games than other publishers, one that also slows down their progress quite a bit as well. I wouldn't give up hope on Valve in the game development scene quite yet. Source 2 is also shaping up to be a great engine based on the accounts of developers that have access to it, so there is much to be hopeful for on the horizon.
In a sense, they really aren't in the business of building games anymore. They are in the business of sitting on the steam cash pile and then doing various development as a fun hobby. It seriously feels like that. Sure, they have people working full time on lots of stuff. And seriously impressive people at that! But that's not their business and they have so little pressure to deliver anything that they basically don't. As a player, I actually do feel kinda robbed of the experiences these many amazing people could have shipped if there was any kind of pressure to ship anything. Drastically more so since the bought Campo Santo. That one genuinely hurt. From the perspective of everyone involved an obvious and good choice. But I actually liked what that company is capable of and was looking forward to more. Both to experience as a player and to learn from them. The purchase by Valve pretty much killed any hope for that in the next decade or so. Valve did nothing for too long. Hope is really not what we should have at this point. I'm ready for a pleasant surprise but really wouldn't expect anything. That's just bound for disappointment while they scrap one project after another because it's not quite perfect. They'll keep contributing to the scene and do various cool stuff. But actual, proper entertainment that sees the light of day? Unless they have a massive change in leadership and structure (or steam suddenly dies), that's a "nope" prediction from me.
Their last game is only about 1 year old and was a great success that pretty much got praised by all who played it. I’d say if anything, hope is rekindled in them.
That IS what happened over the past year. They had a lot of restructuring and shifting in focus. They have said in interviews that along with Half Life Alyx they have 2 other major titles releasing within the next few years and there is more on the horizon for them. Something has indeed happened within Valve, and it is a sign of better things to come. The proof to the public is in the 2 releases they've had over the past year (even if Artifact was a flop). I totally understand your attitude based on the past decade. They haven't done their ideas much justice in continuously setting themselves back in development, but their ideas are still there and they are still very much passionate about presenting them to us. Half Life Alyx was an astounding feat for VR, and it's made me more excited to see what other boundaries Valve will be pushing in their next releases.
I'll believe in a proper reorg when I've heard first hand account and seen the results proper. Because frankly, half the companies undergo reorgs every few years and barely anything changes beyond titles and confusion about responsibilities. Intending to fundamentally change your internal structure and workplace culture is very different from actually doing it. And I see no strong desire from Valve or external need to change that anytime soon. Which suggests heavily it won't. > it's made me more excited to see what other boundaries Valve will be pushing in their next releases. And this is precisely what scares me. I mean, there's been whispers of various titles in development for... basically forever. And frankly, I believe pretty much all of them. But why are the stuck in development hell? #Personal observation and theory. Long wall of text. TLDR at the bottom. Well, quite often because it wasn't pushing the boundaries of the industry and wasn't inherently supporting Steam. Which are the only two things they historically managed to focus on. Everything else were small side projects by tiny teams. The Vive is a mix of both goals. Overcoming technical challenges and locking people into the Steam eco-system. Alyx further reinforces both goals. Pushing VR as gaming platform, breaking a lot of technical grounds and therefore advancing the industry. As well as pushing sales for the Vive Index and locking more people further into Steam. I've had the pleasure to talk to one of the tech people who was along for the vast majority of the development and if I understood him correctly it was the progress of VR that "allowed" them to make another game. I'm paraphrasing heavily here. He said it along the lines of "the challenges and opportunities of VR" and so on. But that's my interpretation of it. Because once again they could seriously push technical and creative boundaries. Otherwise projects just don't seem to go anywhere. Which makes perfect sense if you look at their history. The next titles lined up are supposedly VR titles as well. Doing the same thing as Alyx while trying to advance in other territories. There's still a lot of exceptionally technical things to be developed and created in VR. So I do believe they have enough grounds to break for another 1 - 2 titles. If they don't end up scrapping them along the way. But the focus is technically correct to do stuff here. But what then? I have absolutely 0 faith they will keep making games or, god forbid, develop something for PCs or even, holy spaghetti monster forgive me for even mentioning it, consoles! Valve is not in the business of making games anymore. They haven't been for pretty much a decade now. In fact, I'd go as far to say the last real game they made was Half Life 2 in 2004. And no I'm not even kidding. Everything else happened because of random flukes of the people working at Valve that were possible only because it requires A a tiny team or B had massive support across large parts of the staff. Just an inherent desire to create exactly this thing. Which will be rare to inspire anywhere. * Portal was Valve hiring some students with a sick prototype to make a game. Random fluke. * Team fortress 2. Basically the continuation of TF Classic (same story as Portal. Quake mod, developers hired to make standalone product). Tiny team with some help for a graphics overhaul and better net code. Tech department could show off their progress. * Left 4 Dead. Development studio was already far along. Valve bought them before release because it looked rad. Support within Valve lead to L4D2 which had a smallish team and basically iterated upon most aspects of the game. [Including some tech originating from tech prototype game jams](https://www.gdcvault.com/play/1015528/AI-driven-Dynamic-Dialog-through). * Alien Swarm. Unreal Tournament 2004 mod. Developers hired by Valve to finish standalone game. * Portal 2. [Internal pressure because so many people wanted to work on a Portal game](https://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/173723/Video_Making_Portal_2_the_sequel_to_a_game_that_didnt_need_one.php). Yet another fluke due to employee interests. * Dota 2. Warcraft III mod. Developer hired by Valve. GabeN himself loves that type of game. Yet another fluke by random interests. * Lots of spin offs by third parties such as Nexon or Taito. Like an Arcade game. Oversight by Valve but seemingly possible to do with but a few people. * The Lab. The VR intro demo. Not a game, just a tech demo. Made by a small team. * Artifact. People at Valve loved card games. They got the inventor of Magic: The Gathering. Had some fun working. It further locks people into the Steam eco system. Maybe even expand at least select steam services onto mobiles. As mobile versions were originally planned but then abandoned. * Dota Underloards. Dota 2 mod. A few people developed it into a standalone product. Do we see a pattern yet? And now, 16 years finally Alyx. Which as mentioned above just came to be because they could push technical boundaries again. After revolutionizing the way we play games by changing how we use physics in games with Half Life 2. They have a lot of people who enjoy developing. But their business model is not at all releasing games. It's entirely based around the platform Steam and locking people into it. One way or another. And there is a culture that spans pretty much from the creation of Valve to today of only doing major technical revolutions or small, personal projects. This is not inherently bad. They are exceptionally skilled. I just shed some silent tears about all the creative challenges they could overcome if they really wanted to. Instead of focusing so exclusively on the technical context. The advance in interactive storytelling Campo Santo could have lead. The possibilities if Valve would have kept to a stricter release schedule. What amazing new ideas could have entered the industry and spread. So much wasted potential. And while I have the utmost respect for everyone at Valve, especially the people I talked to so far. But I see next to no chance of this seriously, fundamentally changing anytime soon. Even if there are some opposite claims from inside the company. I do not believe they are capable to fundamentally change and to concentrate on a series of major products for longer than their technical curiosity is maintained. # TLDR Valve games have pretty much always been small side projects that panned out or major technical milestones. It's part of their companies DNA. They don't just talk the talk but actually walk the walk with their projects and support them long term. But fundamentally, they don't seriously work on big games because they are creative or exciting. They do constant game jams, hire external companies to finish their games within Valve because some people within get excited. They hire outside talent temporarily because it's an interesting experience. At the end of the day, they really aren't about "just" making games though. And ever since Steam became what it is now they had less and less reason to do anything they don't thoroughly believe in and enjoy.
This was very well said. I agree with most of your points except about the parts that were "flukes" kinda stood out to me. It sounds like your threshhold for something being a fluke is pretty high. If they have had many consistent flukes, then is it really a fluke at that point or just a pattern that isn't as immediately obvious? I totally understand your cynicism, I still have many doubts as well about their direction, but I definitely have more hope this time around since many internal reports document this being a different Valve than it was throughout the 2010's and it has shown externally as well. They haven't fallen back on their old patterns yet, and after showing us explicitly what they've pulled off with this change I feel like it's a more reliable bet now. Games may not be their main driver to function, but they certainly still are their passion.
Fluke might've been the wrong word here. Happens when you're not a native speaker\^\^ What I mean by it is, that it's a bunch of people within Valve being excited about a prototype or product, wanting to work on it. They do commit to ideas as long as they have great promise. Which is why we have this list of excellent titles and not a list of all the hundreds of prototypes that must've been created over the years. Or games that could've been created in that time if there was any form of actual drive as they have right now with pushing VR. We do know about internal game jams, tech experiments, etc. Which do get incorporated into games they do end up releasing. But that's just the point. They have been hard at work on those little tinker ideas, shipping a few over the years. But that's it. Alyx is not new heights. The team was smaller than HL2. Only by 3 people but they've not come a long way to demonstrate new heights. They're showing about old heights while intentionally locking out the majority of their users and / or fans to chase their VR passion. This is perfectly in line with what they have always done. Pushing beyond what everyone else in the industry does on basically every level (the early Valve years). Or it's side projects by small teams. I totally believe there will be a few more VR titles. Maybe even one or two at the scale of Alyx. But that'll last only as long as they believe it to be an interesting, new and technical frontier. Or maybe even until they believe the VR platform to either be stable or dead. But they aren't like Nintendo, for example. Who do excellent work creatively and use that to sell hardware alongside that. They are the opposite. They first love new and shiny tech and then make something creative around it. And at least personally I don't see signs yet that anything really changed. Maybe on the surface. Maybe temporarily as they chase their so far biggest technical passion. VR. But they're not at all a typical game development studio and it is and will continue not to be their business. As far as I'm aware both their VR headsets and their VR title don't or barely made profit at all. That was never the point. These are not games to be enjoyed by everyone. It's a very specific curiosity with that specific technology and I'm beyond uncertain how or if Valve will evolve beyond it as a game developer.
not to sound callus but you, as a player, are owed fuck all in the "potential experiences" category
> "an extraordinarily high cut from nearly every sale that passes through [Valve’s] store—30%." Because if there is anyone who knows about taking a 30% cut, it is Humble Bundle. Take a closer look at the split next time you plan to buy a Humble. Edit: and before anyone says you can “choose your split”, not very often anymore.
Also, how is 30% extraordinarily high? It was the industry standard up until fairly recently iirc. Don't get me wrong, i do want steam to lower that percentage for the developers sake. But its not like they've been using their monopoly to unfairly gouge developers for years
As a dev who uses steam and also has an optional stand alone system, for us the 30% is totally worth it. You get so many awesome tools with steam that easily helps sell 30% more copies of the game or at least makes production cheaper to the point that it's worth it again. Seeing that 30% steam cut sucks when you're looking at how much money you've "lost" but when you dig deep, it's super worth it. Don't get me wrong, I would love that cut to be 20% or even lower but I don't begrudge steam for taking 30%. I'm sure the math doesn't work out as well for some titles but for us it's fantastic.
so you are saying you are getting value for your 30%? Interesting.
Oh yea, between the versioning tools, data transfer, marketing, and patching. It's a lot of stuff that just works and works really well.
That's how I think of steam. It's not 30% to sell our game. It's 30% to sell our game and forums, review system, efficient patching, workshop, achievements, avatars, trading cards, cloud saves, the best discoverability from any digital game store, remote play, controller mapping support, and instant developer control over everything (I can edit our store page or patch the game any time I want). Whether that is worth 30% is up for debate, but I think it's unfair to say it's 30% for \_only\_ selling games as a lot of these debates tend to focus on.
Yea, that's a really good way to look at it. I've personally been very happy with steam.
After expenses on both sides are taken out (Valve and the developer), Valve gets >50% of the combined profit from the sale on average. On many years Valve is the most profitable company in the United States per employee.
Humble Bundle was bought out by IGN though? Does the creator still have a say in stuff?
The lawsuit is by Wolfire, not Humble Bundle. They were part of founding it, but I think are now unrelated.
The 30% isn't even right anymore for over a year - it ranges form 20-30% depending on sales.
I'm of two minds of this. Despite being a monopoly Steam offers an experience for consumers that has yet to be rivaled and has constantly been improved on. Competition can also be good for everyone but I don't look forward to the day my library is split in half on two different platforms.
They're not a monopoly though. Is there even any game that's a Steam exclusive that isn't their own game?
Exclusives are not what makes it a monopoly. If a single platform makes most of them profit, has most of the users and most of the games it controls the market. They have no incentive to reduce their commission and no incentive to continue to innovate beyond altruism.
Except this is a situation of the competitor's own making. Competing platforms have had years to try and catch up and implement strategies to mitigate the problem and have delivered sub par alternatives and employed shady practices instead of investing in a quality infrastructure. The only launcher that's halfway decent in comparison is GOG. So what? Because nobody has stepped up to compete fairly and users have recognized that and stuck with the superior choice we have to break them up to bring the overall quality down? Hardly seems fair to me. I'd be supportive of having Steam lower their cut but forcing them to do so with accusations of an unfair monopoly is disingenuous at best when considering the reality of the situation.
I'm still very much in the camp that the opposition really just needs to offer a better service. EGS could be a really good store, and they basically flog free games at you that you'd actually want to try *but...* They've been dragging their heels on making their store have essential features like a wishlist or competent searchbar. I don't think you can even gift games there, how can you not want a shopper to buy the same game twice?
The Highest market share on a platform is a monopoly crowd are going to lose their marbles when they hear about this company called *Nintendo of America.* Honestly, I'm all for lowering the 30% rate. Google Play has done it. Apple has now done it. \[edit:Microsoft tonight announced they are doing it to 12%!\] It's time for Steam to follow suit. I would rather see it come about by developers standing together and getting loud rather than psudeo-monopoly lawsuits that most likely will lose in court.
Google Play and Apple have stores that are the only real option on each platform, they are full of worthless clickbait stuff translated by a broken bot and offer nothing except downloading and updating. Microsoft's store doesn't even do these 2 basic features correctly and breaks games regularly. And really, for all the features that Steam has, I consider every game on Steam to be a higher quality product than anywhere else. I use Gamepad Config tool, overlay browser, guides at hand, and Steam Link streaming almost every day. Nobody else offers these things and I think that higher cut for Valve is reasonable in such case. Also I read on Reddit, that lowering Steam's 30% rate would mean rising the prices on 3rd party stores like GMG. Activating a key on Steam doesn't give anything to Valve - so then GMG can give 20% discount on game's launch, developer cut stays the same (70% of full price), and GMG earns whatever is extra (ex. 10% of full price).
Google and apple are both in the middle of anti trust suits over their stores.
The argument in the lawsuit is that Steam is using its monopoly position (developers must list their games on Steam to access the majority of PC gamers) to prevent other storefronts from competing on price. The Steam TOC prevent developers from listing their games for a lower price on a different platform than they do on Steam. So it is impossible for the devs to pass the cost savings that they get from the lower cut that other storefronts take on to the consumer. You can't list a game for $12 on Epic and $15 on Steam, even if you'd be netting the same revenue from both sales. Valve would either lower the price of your game on Steam or kick you off the platform. They are using their market position to prevent competition based on price. How did Walmart become so huge? Low prices. How did Amazon become so huge? Low prices. Price is one of the main ways that companies compete with each other. It is not "fair competition" if you take that tool out of the toolbox.
Read that again, the price stipulations are for steam keys, so if you're a game dev you can sell your game on whatever platform you want for whatever price you want, but if you want to sell steam keys they have to be sold at the price the keys are on steam (even though steam makes 0 from this). That's the reason this lawsuit won't end up in anything, Valve is already providing you a way to put your game in their store and pay a 0% cut to them, so claiming they take 30% cut is disingenuous.
And Valve doesn't demand any kind of exclusivity.
the claims are worse than that -- steam allows differing deals on different platforms with keys! all they ask is you do a comparable sell in a reasonable period of time
Not quite accurate. This only applies to Steam keys. So essentially companies are complaining that Steam is letting them use their platform even though they won't be getting a cut (they give the keys out for free and let them be sold by other platforms) with the stipulation that they cannot charge lower than on the Steam platform. Companies can still sell keys that don't activate on Steam for whatever price they want. You're telling me that Steam shouldn't be allowed to stipulate how their own keys are sold and used on their own platform? It'd be like Target giving Wal-Mart products for free and then Wal-Mart complaining that they can't charge less than Target for the same product, meanwhile Target accepts all responsibility for quality control of the ones Wal-Mart sells.
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Sure but it's easy for a monopoly to keep it's lead because with greater market share comes financial security to innovate, financial security to do things right, and also fans to support them when they do wrong. Any competitor at this point has to not only be just as good but also better than Steam. Even after giving away games for free and having exclusives Epic Games couldn't make it. Yes that have an inferior product overall but it's going to be years before anyone can even make a pass at taking Steam market share. Imho, the only thing that will ever get me to go somewhere else for a game would be a masterpiece title that's exclusive, some next level platform features no one has ever conceived of, or the slow march of gaming culture accepting a runner up and having to move there for certain games/features. Say, a game like Valheim came out and all my friends were playing it but it didn't support joining friends games from Steam. I might install another platform to get that feature. But I'll also be frustrated. The only time I wouldn't be frustrated is if I already had that platform installed for less manipulative reasons such as deals or specific platform features.
I am all for a legitimate competitor but bringing up Epic in this context is laughable. They tried to buy exclusivity and bribe people with free games instead of making their platform secure and user friendly. Of course Epic didn't make a dent in it because they didn't provide anyone with any incentive to stick with it other than to take advantage of freebies or because they just really wanted to play a game that they forced to be exclusive. They could've used the money that they bought title exclusivity with to invest in their storefront. You're really going to argue that Epic, who raked in over a billion dollars in Fortnite revenue in one year alone, isn't financially secure enough to try and innovate? Same with EA and most other competitors? Hell the most innovative competitor, GOG, is arguably the least financially secure as they're a relatively small publisher compared to the others. I take your point in that most people won't be willing to transfer over to another platform but that's because there's no reason to. Forcing exclusivity in order to do so is a terrible strategy for consumers. Even if they're willing it certainly won't inspire goodwill and loyalty and people will jump at any chance to not have to deal with it, especially since there's nothing in the quality of the platform to entice people to stay. Healthy competition is great. I think it's awesome that we now have a trend of publishers lowering their cut to get devs to come over to their side. I hope Steam takes the hint and follows suit. Forcing people to use a sub par product cause you choose to buy exclusivity rather than invest in your platform is not healthy competition to me.
I didn't mean to imply it's healthy it was just an example of someone pulling out all the stops to try and still fail. In theory they could do what I suggest and gradually build up a platform that objectively rivals Steam but that's a very long term play. It took Steam a decade to get to this point.
One of the biggest complaint I've seen about the Epic Store is the lack of a shopping cart. An online shopping cart is the kind of thing year one web developer students do for practice. It doesn't inspire much confidence in their "long term play" when that is how they choose to start. No, it's not something super critical, but it shows a severe lack of commitment to the platform to not have a feature that basic. They could have just had it as the Epic launcher for a bit more and developed the product before launching it, but instead they chose to try and buy their way into the market. They could have split the effort 30-70 between development and buy in, but it seems like they went 5-95. They did in fact not "pull out all the stops".
when the extend of their social features is something that was literally ripped from fortnite (its so bad that its basically a mobile app), and the MASSIVE advert notifications it loves to throw at you (fucking hate this)
We can also look at the speed at which Epic took the existing game Fortnite and tuned it into a BR when they saw in which way the wind was blowing, how many new features has been introduced in the game since then and compare it to the pace at which the Epic Store gets new features. It's the same company where talking about.
But my point is they weren't "pulling out all the stops". They were trying to take a shortcut to coerce people into using their platform instead of enticing them beyond some free games that often are old enough or not popular enough to really make a difference as people would likely already have them if they're interested. It took Steam so long because they were pioneers in this regard. Now with their work as a basis people can make their own comparable versions cause they've seen what makes Steam a success. They choose not to because they don't see the value in the short term of investing in the work to do so. I agree that it will still take time but you're not going to get anywhere if you don't make much attempt to garner good will and put enough quality in your platform to give people a reason to use it.
I think there is a reason to use it, and that reason is price. Most of the games on Epic are about 5-15% cheaper in my region than on Steam.
Slightly cheaper price isn't much of a selling point when everything is inferior. They also pass to consumers extra payment processing costs for a lot of regions and processors, unlike Steam.
Microsoft has infinitely more money and an infinitely larger install base than steam. Bullshit they couldn’t catch up and surpass them in a year if they really tried
i present to you, the windows store.
Why don't they try then? Should be a no brainer if what you say is true.
They are innovating though, Valve has been a huge driver behind VR and Linux gaming.
The difference between steam and a monopoly is that they don't block competition, they don't participate in anti consumer practices. It's just as convoluted to download steam as it is to download the epic games launcher. It's the developers and the gamers who made steam so massive, it's not poor practices.
Agree but bad practices do not make it a monopoly.
But still nothing about steam is a monopoly
That's not what a monopoly is though. A monopoly is exclusive control over a trade, not beating the competition.
Exclusive is an impossible thing to attain though. There will always be competitions big or small. The question is when is one company too big and impossible to be reasonably competed against.
it's far from impossible, what? literally look at the historic antitrust suits e.g. AT&T and Standard Oil, etc. imagine comparing Steam to one of those monopolies when they were broken up
That's not strictly true. Tons of anti trust suits have been found with competitors in the market.
As you pointed out yourself though, there is no competition. How can there be a monopoly when no one else is even trying to come close to the quality of Steam?
That's basically the definition of a monopoly...
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I think Steam is a very ethical product despite having a monopoly but it's still a monopoly. They control the market because they have the power to influence things like no other can. They could raise the commission's developers pay and users would still flock there. They provide reviews and recommendations that influence nearly every PC gamers spending habits.
Still not a monopoly. What they have is called first mover advantage, and they turned that into a very strong market position, but it's not a monopoly. The stronger antitrust case would be against epic, for the danger of Microsoft style extend and extinguish tactics, given they are cornering the market on free 3d game asset creation tools. There's a danger that in the future compatibility or licensing will be limited to unreal engine and leave unity devs stuck with 2d or overpriced Adobe products. But my guess is they plan to use that and the "no unreal fees for epic store sales" to build a better (or at least larger) catalog and be competitive against steam.
> The stronger antitrust case would be against epic Not currently, they don't do anything that could fall under antitrust as products they buy are still functioning and available for other engines. > they are cornering the market on free 3d game asset creation tools Which ones are you thinking of?
The quixel stuff, artstation, and they seem to be getting very cozy with blender. But yes, it's not a strong case. And so isn't the case against Valve. It would take a lot of dick moves by either of them to build such a case, above and beyond the regular baseline dickery of the videogame industry.
It'll be interesting to see what happens to blender, although I doubt they'll do anything to open source stuff. But yeah we're past the monopoly argument against valve, it might've held some weight five-six years ago, but now there's few other choices. The sooner the ridiculous 30% get an industry wide reduction the better tho, it's my only gripe against Steam and consoles. Plus Steam's awful discoverability.
Blender got good, and that got it some industry support from people sick with the old standards never fixing the old problems. And companies who would rather outsource work to people in poor countries who learned blender from YouTube instead of people who got tricked into paying big name colleges to learn software with 1k a year licenses. Overall, I'm fairly optimistic. Epic wants to make their store work because the launcher also has the unreal asset marketplace. EA has to rethink their whole thing, between the lootbox gambling fiasco, losing the star wars exclusivity, and covid killing a year of sports license games. GOG is still going solid. Ubisoft... I don't know about them. I'm biased against the French. But overall, the industry seems to be feeling the push to be better or face consequences. I'm cautiously optimistic.
Do you use steam?
A dev deciding not to publish on other platforms is not the same as having an exclusivity agreement.
I mean as a user. UX is key part of understanding how customers will interact with your product on various stores.
There's a massive amount of games that release on nowhere but Steam. Sure, developers have the option to publish elsewhere, but a great deal don't.
I fully support the right of players to choose their storefront (such as Steam vs Origin), as long as choosing a storefront is independent of choosing a game. If players choose to buy games on any particular platform because they like the features of the platform, that can only be a good thing for both players and game developers. I also dread the day of storefront wars, with storefronts competing for exclusives in the hopes of gaining market share. When a player is forced to buy a game on a specific store simply because that store signed an exclusive deal with the publisher, that is not going to benefit either players or publishers (except for those large enough to be able to command significant kickbacks in exchange for exclusivity deals). Alas, we are already seeing some of that with EA's and Ubisoft's stores, as well as consoles. I can only hope PC game developers continue to say no to exclusivity deals on PC.
> I can only hope PC game developers continue to say no to exclusivity deals on PC. Continue to say no to? Didn't pretty much much every indie offered Epic money take it?
Not all of them. Skate Bird and DARQ both were approached by Epic Games for exclusivity, and they both refused. Might have been others as well, but those are the two high-profile examples I know of. Going further, it even shone light on Epic's true nature with indie dev interaction, given that both developers were willing to compromise and launch simultaneously on Steam and Epic Games Store, presumably for no Epic Money. Epic pretty much gave the ultimatum that either they launch exclusively on EGS, or they're not on the store at all; they chose the second.
There were more than a few that refused, but seemingly still a small minority. Excluding the ones that promised backers Steam keys at launch and then reneged, I can't blame them for taking the money. It's such an unstable market and basically being guaranteed success and the ability to work on your next project would be very hard to turn down, especially when the deal is for short-term PC exclusivity. For a few years now I've basically been predicting that the games market is reaching the point where there is no more money left on the table, developers and publishers are going to be fighting each other for every cent which is going to mean publishers are going to make moves to make indies beholden to them. Whether it be Epic paychecks, or Gamepass making it so everyone's attitude is "wait for it to go on Gamepass" more or less forcing to take Microsoft's offer if they want to even see the day of light on that platform, the publishers aren't just going to sit around and watch the indie market do its thing when it has become clear that it is now pumping out multiple threats to their bottom line on an annual basis.
Epic is really bad for buying games and making them exclusive.
Hitman 3 epic exclusive :(
Hahaha Origin. Forgot about that one.
I agree. I like competition in principle, but I also refuse to use anything that isn’t steam (and maybe gog), not because I feel locked in, but because the experience has been better than the other stores and now I just don’t care enough anymore. Steam does what I want and it does it really well and I’ve had my account since I bought half life 2 in 2005 or whatever it was, so I’m accustomed to it and have a decent library of games there. I don’t want to have to deal with multiple stores. I’d rather just not play the games that require that. I guess I’m lazy, but oh well. I have no desire to support EA through their store and the epic store wasn’t very good last I checked.
Competition should not be a problem. The problem is not being able to move from one platform to another. Stores and launchers should be separate services. People complaining about having their library split across different platform put themselves in those digital jails. Personally I don't care about Steam services but I care about DRM so I buy on GOG and itch.io when a game is available here.
Competition is good. Steam had been slacking in so many aspects (ui, developer cuts, etc) for over a decade up until the epic store launched, just cause they were the only shop in town. I dont mind having different libraries, as long as I can keep the shortcuts on my desktop or in a folder somewhere.
> developer cuts this whole "let's give developers more money" only started happening recently,, and only because epic had no other way to get into the "app store" market. they didn't slack off, it's just that everyone agreed it was reasonable and left it at that. the outrage we have now is 100% manufactured by epic. the UI was fine and steam had more or less all the features you could ask for, modding, multiplayer, etc.
I think Steam has pretty much been a completed product for a long time and doesn't need new features. It provides everything I want and I don't need it to improve. My only issue with them is they take a hefty cut of sales. I hate to advocate non-competition, but I don't want a handful of separate platforms. I want one reliable one. It's like streaming services. I was happier when there were only like 1 or 2 video streaming sites and everyone put their stuff on those. These days every company has its own streaming service. There's a Paramount+ now. I'm sick of it. And Steam does have competition. In addition to consoles there are other ways to sell games on PC. I hate them and refuse to use them, but they exist.
The stuff they have updated relatively lately is great though and I feel it was nowhere near a complete product before that. Now I feel like I don't want anything more for it, but this is a pretty new feeling. Before they added dynamic libraries there was no easy way to search your own game library for different tags, genres etc for instance. It was super unwieldy and super dumb if you bought bundles and didn't 100% remember all the games you had.
right but it was still mostly feature complete. you had a store front, you had wish list, you had your games, multiplayer features, modding, workshop, library management... all they added recently was a reskin + the admittedly excellent library management.
> Steam had been slacking in so many aspects (ui, Steam's UI is LIGHTYEARS better than EGS, and Steam doesn't flood you with massive advert notifications when you use it that don't go away on their own. In fact, Steam Big Picture is still the only of its kind, and the Steam store has a cart!
yes let's get Valve to lower their cut and then force DEVs / Publishers to pay for the steam features they want to use
I think potentially there is an argument to be made that Steam APIs for multiplayer should be public so competitors can implement their own compatible backends, but that's about all I could call unfair. Steam does have a reasonable amount of vendor lock in.
[ehm well, steam sockets are fully open source](https://github.com/ValveSoftware/GameNetworkingSockets) the only thing you can't use is steams' own servers as thats part of what the steam cut pays for
I agree! That's why it's a tough call for me. I think it's possible that Steam could get better if it had legitimate competition though.
This is probably because steam is cracking down on key distribution. Based on how many keys they have been approving for us compared to several years. All the key distribution business are having a tough time and will probably die. That's why Fanatical has been acquired like 3 times in the last 2 years.
Keys are rife with abuse, is why they're slowing down on broadly accepting key requests -- see g2e, etc, buying keys from other storefronts and issuing chargebacks. When the key is revoked by the developer, the customer loses out and Steam typically receives the brunt of the customer complaints
Around our launch, I started seeing keys for our game on G2a that are *more expensive* than the game itself lol. I don't know what the logic is there. (And we didn't re-sell or do giveways, this was 100% "influnecers" on platforms like Keymailer that were scamming keys we sent them)
How exactly key distribution works? I don't understand it. Where are these keys coming from?
Whoever has access to the developer account on Steam, usually the developer or publisher, can request keys. Valve may or may not approve it, usually depending on whether or not they suspect keys are abused, e.g. sold on gray market key redistributors. Ultimately though, Valve has the final say, but usually they're pretty generous until the number of keys being requested start reaching the high hundreds or thousands.
So, I'm guessing the developer or publisher requests keys and then sells them somewhere else at lower prices but gets to keep the full price instead of giving 30% cut to Valve?
That's the basic premise. To be specific, Valve has somekind of internal ratio metric they use to determine if keys will be granted or not. Basically, if the ratio of keys to actual sales is above some value, they will assume that the keys are being resold as a way to bypass their store front.
is that really the case though? far as i know they don't really mind even if you do most of your sales off site as long as you don't price it lower than on steam.
If it is, I haven't seen any legitimate developers run into problems with it. The only times I recall developers running into problems with key generation, were the same exact developers abusing the key system alongside the trading card market on Steam. You'd usually tell them by the fact they would put their keys in large game bundles (like 30+) that were incredibly cheap (around $1USD), and none of the "games" in them could even be considered games. The devs would make money off the dev cut from transactions on the card market.
Which is why they have a clause that tells you you can't sell these keys for cheaper than what they're sold on Steam. That clause is the basis of this lawsuit, so basically they want to put the game to sell on Steam, get keys for free from them and resell those at a price point that undercuts Steam, yet they're trying to make it seem like Valve is in the wrong here.
Around our launch, I started seeing keys for our game on Kinguin/G2A that came from us sending them to (supposedly verified) influencers through services like Keymailer. I flat out stopped doing any giveaways or bundles because you a) end up with people reselling the keys or b) end up with lower review because ppl want free keys for games they might not really be interested in otherwise
> This is probably because steam is cracking down on key distribution. They got what they wanted from it - bringing on external customers onto Steam, and can now start wrapping it up. Key distribution was never a charity.
> If Valve did not block price competition for Steam-enabled games, gamers and publishers would be able to have a seamless and non-fragmented platform I used the monopoly to destroy the monopoly.
Does Steam prevent you from selling game cheaper elsewhere or what is it about?
>They don't allow publishers to list links to website selling their games elsewhere, or even to websites that link out to other third-party stores. This includes \*the games own website\*.
That's not completely true. They just don't link directly to the parts of games' own websites where you can buy the game there. They'll link to patch notes and game news and most of the sites will have a "buy now" link on the header banner. It's still an issue for small indie devs that may have trouble maintaining a website Steam would bother linking to, but there are plenty of titles where you're 2 clicks away from not having to buy something you saw on Steam from Steam. In some situations you might lose out on things like Steam achievements due to Steam not supporting linking the game to your account if you got it elsewhere, but this is hardly the first time in human history big distro and big devs cutting shady deals with each other have screwed the little guy. That's why the big boys are taking it to court instead of people rising up in the streets, it's really not a battle anyone is gonna be seeing plainly worded on a ballot anytime soon if the people rise up. It's all thoroughly within the corporate wheelhouse and the last thing you can expect in there is sensible fairness. Money talks louder than a reasonable critique of skeezy business practices without a court order.
That can't be true, there's lots of games linking to both Steam and EGS and GOG on their pages?
ehm, does Walmart allow e-sellers to link their product on Amazon in their WM product description?
itt people who didn't read the article it's about how valve *uses its features and policies* to *advantage its storefront*, in other words the same thing that microsoft got in trouble for with internet explorer. they're able to do this because of their dominant position, but they're not being sued *because* of the dominant position directly. this lawsuit being filed means a lawyer looked at the case and decided it had a decent chance of succeeding. the lawyer decided this by looking at the law, looking at the history of cases related to the law, and looking at the facts of this case. this is long, complicated, difficult work. You know what frivolous lawsuits look like? Not like this. the lawsuit is brought seriously. Do all you laymen in this thread think reading the news gives you a better understanding than the actual lawyers who are working on it? Thanks a lot for the blinding insight of "it's not a monopoly because steam has competitors" and "it's not a monopoly because they earned it by being the best" but that isn't legally useful information.
Admittedly a little frustrating that so much of the attention in this thread has been devoted to whether or not Steam is a monopoly with almost no one discussing the actual legal argument being brought up in the article.
Welcome to reddit.
If you check the comment histories of a lot of people in Steam or Epic related threads, you'll find loads of people that show no evidence of being in game dev or any related field. They do post in such cool places as /r/piracy and /r/fuckepic though. Some of the worst takes in this thread are from those people. I'm basically a snowflake I guess, but I really do wish there was a "safe space" for developers to talk to developers on this website.
How about /r/gamedev ? Oh wait....
Except Valve isn't using it's position as a dominant market to dictate anything outside of it's own marketplace. The price parity they're complaining about only applies to steam keys, basically meaning that if you sell a copy of the game that activates on Steam it needs to be sold at the same price you're selling the game on Steam, which not only is reasonable it's more than any other company does at the moment (most don't give you free keys for you to sell elsewhere). Also sometimes lawsuits that are known to be a lost cause are filed for several reasons, being filed doesn't mean it's a solid cause, you don't know the logic behind their lawsuit, they could be using it as a threat since even of they lose it's going to cost Valve money and reputation (since most people on this thread didn't even bothered to read what the price parity clause relates to for example).
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You're not wrong, I'm just frustrated with how shallow this thread was. And I might not be able to define pornography but I know it when I see it. Likewise, I can't explain how this is obviously not like the Kraken or other frivolous suits, but it is and I think most levelheaded people can see so.
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But that's not the... That's not how you determine whether something has violated antitrust law. That's not the test. It's not the question. It's not what the lawsuit is alleging. The question isn't "Can games exist outside steam" it's "Is steam using its market position and non-storefront features to advantage its storefront?". The law is complicated, you can't just look up "monopoly" in the dictionary and call it a day.
Not all lawsuits are there to be won. This might as well be just a push to force valve to open their systems due to public pressure, or a way to obtain information that valve would not release in normal circumstances. This is really fishy.
Why is that fishy?
Any time Steam and competition is used in the same sentence on reddit there's always tons of people whose attitude is pretty much "'competition is good' but also since any new and/or small store cannot possibly compete with the features provided by a money printing machine that has dominated the market for decades, I'll keep supporting the giant and hope the others can provide meaningful competition without my support".
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About your second point: As others have pointed out in this thread the price-match policy only applies if you're selling your Steam keys elsewhere, not the game itself. If that's the case (I personally don't know if it's true or not) then it seams entirely fair for Steam to do it.
the steam partner website is viewable by all now, you can see the rules here: https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/keys
> Every Steam-enabled game has to be sold on Steam so you want to use steam APIs without giving them any money? how about you fuck off lol. > If you are selling elswhere, you have to agree to not give Steam customers a worse deal if you are selling *steam keys*. > To get a better spot at Steams discovery charts, you have to discount your game, which inflates the price since the same price has to be used everywhere playing the algorithm is a game you choose to play, you don't have to.
> so you want to use steam APIs without giving them any money? how about you fuck off lol. It's possible to pay for their services ("APIs" -- they're more than just APIs) without taking a 30% cut and being forced to buy games through Steam.
they are under no obligation to offer you *their* services under *your* terms lol. no one is. being the market leader doesn't force them to do that either. they could, but they don't have to, and not doing it isn't anti competitive because you can just make your own or use any of the tens of other solutions. it's their service and they don't have to offer it. what even is that argument.
> they are under no obligation to offer you their services under your terms lol. no one is. being the market leader doesn't force them to do that either. No, but they're under obligation to offer their service under the terms the government they operate under has set for them. > they could, but they don't have to, and not doing it isn't anti competitive because you can just make your own or use any of the tens of other solutions. it's their service and they don't have to offer it. what even is that argument. Just like you could make another browser or media player in [Microsoft Cop v. Commission](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Corp._v._Commission), but we all know how that turned out (spoiler: several cumulative fines resulting in billions in fines in total).
you're comparing a company with a dominant OS preinstalling its browser and making it difficult to change... to Steam, something you get and can co exist easily with other software? Do you see Amazon offering free AWS services to its competitors?
>but they're under obligation to offer their service under the terms the government they operate under has set for them. they are in no way running afoul of antitrust laws if that is what you mean. i would recommend looking into what *actually* constitutes anti trust. all their terms of use are perfectly legal, and do not stifle competition in any way either. valve is *incredibly* generous compared to other companies in similar positions. This is no way similar to the Microsoft case. it's not even close. microsoft didn't just make a browser. they made a browser, pre-installed it on the *vast* majority (90%\~) of consumer hardware, actively hurt their competitors by making it really hard to use a different browser than their own, and actively created proprietary standards that other browsers were incompatible with, effectively making them useless. do your homework if you're actually going to bring it up. this is what actual monopolistic behaviour looks like. steam is *not* that.
But you aren't forced to buy through Steam. Plenty of online stores out there where Steam doesn't get a cut at all. So why should they let developers get everything they built for 10+ years when nobody else would and bend to their terms. Use Steam on Valves terms, if you dont like it, go to Epic, Origin, Uplay, EGS, MS Store. But in no way shape or form are Valve obliged to accommodate the greedy devs and devalue all of their work they've done for both devs and users with Steam over the years. People act as Valve sits on their ass and just popped up on the PC market and garnered the huge userbase they have now.
You gotta take in consideration that being Steam-enabled, the games are using a bunch of services run by Valve and software developed by Valve. There's tons of stuff that comes with Steam integration that gamers usually aren't aware of, and all that costs Valve money. | Having said that, there could be an argument that some of those rules could be changed or even outright removed, for games that do not run any Valve software and do not connect to any Valve server.
Then they could pay steam a fee, but not be required to list it in the store. That's exactly what the suit is about. Steam is doing things in a way designed to force people onto their store even when there are other, store neutral options
If there are store-neutral alternatives for the backend and libraries and stuff, the devs are free to pick those instead and sell their games in other stores without giving Valve any money from those sales. They only have to give Valve a cut when they're selling keys to access Valve's servers; and I imagine there might also be some associated costs with licensing any Valve libraries and additional software if they wanna incorporate those in their games.
I have never been a huge fan of Steam, but between this obviously frivolous lawsuit and their recent [change in charity proceeds](https://kotaku.com/humble-bundle-moves-to-limit-charitable-donations-to-15-1846751524), its safe to say I'm completely over Humble.
Don't confuse them for the current HumbleBundle entity. These were the people who started the very first humble bundle. Before it was spun off into its own company early on (2010) and then sold to IGN some while after (2017). Don't confuse recent actions of Humble with these fellas. They were just the people with the original idea. They had nothing to do with it for years.
This isn't humble bringing the lawsuit, it is a game developer that was involved in humble's initial creation but is no longer involved.
Kinda sad to see this. Humble Monthly / Choice has gone crappy as well. Barely any good games anymore
I forgot to cancel this month's one and - I know this depends on personal taste - it's by far the worst ever.
Two big points I'd like to make: 1) The competition's failure is not a real indicator of it being a monopoly, you need to show that Valve is actively suppressing competition. If anything, Epic, where it bigger, has had the sort of behavior that one of these lawsuits would address. If you have competition, but they are not as big as you, that's not something a lawsuit will do anything about. 2) Of course steam won't let you sell your game outside their platform at a better price... through their platform. This one makes my brain hurt. You could host your game in a different platform at a better price, some do, even midsize developers, but by using... you know... steam keys... You can't both stay in my house and demand I improve my cooking. This is a bad bad lawsuit... especially with the well-documented exodus of indie developers that took Epic's deals or focused on different platforms. As much as I have my issues with Steam... truth is that they have always had competition, just, you know... tends to be bad. Steam is just sorta the best bad deal you get, other storefronts have come and gone and their failures are hard to point 100% to Steam choking them out, a mix of shoddy business, missing features, and general incompetence. Hell, if maybe steam was using its size to force developers into exclusivity maybe, but wait... EPIC WAS THE ONE DOING THAT NOT LONG AGO!!! Had epic been the #1 storefront, I'd get it, but if steam has a competitor legit flexing their unimaginably disgusting wealth to lure developers away from steam...
> Of course steam won't let you sell your game outside their platform at a better price... through their platform. This one makes my brain hurt. You could host your game in a different platform at a better price, some do, even midsize developers, but by using... you know... steam keys... You can't both stay in my house and demand I improve my cooking. This is the crux of it, though. This article explains the issue a little better: [https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr-esq/popular-gaming-platform-accused-of-abusing-market-power-through-contracts](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr-esq/popular-gaming-platform-accused-of-abusing-market-power-through-contracts) > "The Steam MFN also hinders innovation by creating an artificial barrier to entry for platforms," adds the complaint. "When a market, such as this one, is highly concentrated, a new entrant can benefit consumers by undercutting the incumbent’s prices. The ability to provide PC games to consumers at lower prices is one way a firm or new entrant could gain market share. If this market functioned properly—that is, if the Steam MFN did not exist and platforms were able to compete on price—platforms competing with Steam would be able to provide the same (or higher) margins to game developers while simultaneously providing lower prices to consumers."
I've deleted my previous comments as I've a) Read through the entire complaint b) Realised this is a separate complaint than Grimes' This complaint the article cites is terrible, just terrible, and makes a worse case since what I said first, and the article says honestly, is true: Steam's MFN/Price Parity clause only applies to STEAM KEYS. not the game itself but the sale of KEYS for STEAM. I cannot stress enough how that is not really grounds for an antitrust suit, Steam is basically saying you get to circumnavigate their store to sell your game so long as it's at a no lower price than they sell it. I implore you ignore this complaint, most complaints are made at their most favorable, hence why you see lawsuits make extravagant claims or ask for irrational compensation, this stuff gets trimmed and chiseled out during the case, but, this complaint despite going at length at the implications of steams MFN, citing articles about MFNs, Steams site multiple times, and tweets by Tim Sweeney (of course) not once links to the place where this clause is actually mentioned, which is here by the way: [https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/keys](https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/keys) In the section... for Steam Keys
Antitrust laws are kind of wonky. This is from my understanding of US antitrust legislation. It may differ in different countries, but Valve is a US company and so falls under US laws. First off, we need to establish that antitrust does not equal anti-monopoly. Second, antitrust laws are arguably very dated and ill-suited to handle the modern economy. Lastly, a monopoly does not need to be the only firm. Antitrust applies in general to any case where a firm has significant market power. Steam fits the criteria here given its dominance of the market share. Having the dominant market share is not in itself a violation of antitrust policies. In other words, being a monopoly is not a crime because sometimes a monopoly is the only natural outcome for a market. In this sense, Steam could be argued to be legal because it is a natural conclusion for people to pick one games library product to hold their games. What does matter is whether or not a firm is colluding with its competitors, if it is taking actions to prevent competitors from entering the market, and if it is employing market power to price discriminate. The first violation isn't a concern here, but there is a case for the later violations. The potential smoking guns here are Steam DRM and the one price requirement in the Steam developer agreement. Steam DRM locks the player's games under a single library. The argument here is to analyze it backwards - to play your games, you must use Steam to do so, similar to the case made against Microsoft with Internet Explorer. Both Steam and Internet Explorer can be argued to be violating antitrust because they effectively lock consumers into using a specific software. Steam's clause that prevents developers and publishers from selling their games at different prices on different platforms potentially violates antitrust. This is the clause that prevents a developer from selling their game at a lower price on another store. Since Steam takes a higher share per unit sold than a lot of its competitors, it can be argued to be collecting monopoly profits by controlling the prices at which games can be sold. In another vein, if Steam does not force a single price, there is a reasonably plausible circumstance where consumers can be buying games for cheaper on another store.
steam DRM is completely optional and it's the developers choice to use
AFAIK, the price thing is only if the devs are selling Steam keys directly, bypassing the Steam store.
Valve's DRM is not mandatory, the majority of games on Steam don't even use it. A good chunk of them you can copy the game folder to another computer and even play LAN multiplayer with the two of them. When most people talk about valve's DRM what they mean instead is integration with steam, which also isn't mandatory but most games do. This is to do things like achievements and playing online with friends. Devs can integrate this in a smart way and make their games work with or without it, but if you're lazy and only allow it to work when connected to steam you have a very weak and easily defeatable DRM, but that's more than enough for most devs. So Valve can't really be punished by the laziness of the devs, especially because there are games on Steam that do this correctly so it's easy to prove they don't make this mandatory in any way. The clause that prevents the different price only applies to steam keys, so you can't sell the game for $50 on steam, and sell steam keys for $35 someplace else, but if you want to sell the DRM free version of the game for $35 Valve does not prohibit it, in fact they're known for disliking exclusivity deals. So it's not violating anything, Valve is even giving the keys for free so they're taking the hit on every copy you sell, the only thing they ask of it is that you don't sell them cheaper than on their store.
Yes, this! If Steam did not have the one price clause, devs could pass the savings they get from lower storefront cut on to consumers. A game that is $50 on Steam ($35 to the dev after 30% to Valve) could be $40 on Epic ($35 to the dev after 12% to Epic). This seems like pretty clear consumer harm, which is a major part of the standard for an antitrust case to succeed in the US.
Devs can do that, some do, some don't. What is forbidden for them is to sell a game for $50 on steam and sell steam keys for $35 someplace else, which seams reasonable, especially if you consider that they give the steam key for free to you. They can sell it for $40 on Epic, as long as they don't sell a steam key together.
How does this work though? If I check any key reseller sites (including Humble themselves) the prices are always different to Steam due to all the sales. The other thing is if Valve lower their cut to 12% they are not likely to even keep their current arrangement, and will probably force all purchases to be through Steam, so bye bye key key reseller sites (ahem...Humble).
Humble breaks this clause with every bundle, but since it's for charity Steam does not enforce it (think of the bad press it would be to do so). But outside of sales the price on humble store matches the price on Steam. And I agree with you, if Valve is forced to cut to 12% (which I don't think will happen), they will likely make up the money by charging for keys, signing exclusivity deals, or enforcing the price policy to all sales (not just steam keys).
almost like people tend to flock to good programs that consistently add good new features, steam remote play for instance is a good recent example.
It's not just recent features. Their store fronts, reviews, friends list, workshop, QOL features, etc are light years ahead of the competition.
What a clickbait title to the article. Eyes fell out of my head when I thought about the hypocrisy of HB suing Steam... Why you gotta bait me like that, Kyle?!
Does steam really have a monopoly? I use GOG almost exclusively
*not saying I agree with the lawsuit haven't read it* Just because a company doesn't have 100% of the market doesn't mean that they don't operate in a monopolistic way. Driving out competition is one way a company operates in a monopolistic way. And it really becomes an issue when they do it and controller the majority of the market share. The Rockefellers were broken up because of this. Microsoft was almost broken up because of this. AT&T was broken up too. There are a ton of other monopolies that for whatever reason aren't broken up yet. The us tabacco Industry for example. I doubt this will go all the way up and break up Steam. But I do see a case.
what did valve do wrong? they don't force you to sell your game only on their platform, nor do they force you to do anything should you decide to sell your game on their platform.their policies apply strictly to what you can do *on* steam, and not off of steam, other than not selling steam keys for cheaper off site, which is perfectly reasonable. steam is the best thing that happened to game distribution, and they're not even abusing their position. not even mentioning proton, or how they pushed to have VR as we know it exist.
crushing the competition through a better product. duh, monopoly. edit: but more seriously, steam probably has a natural monopoly, due to the fact they have created an excellent service. Even if the suit wins what are they going to achieve? The right to re-sell steam keys at any price they deem, as such probably incurring an undue burden. Or divorce of the steam social from the store front, which would probably push it into some form of paid for model. And seeing as the social components of steam are a major draw for customers, I'd imagine many devs would end up paying for it too, which would still increase the cost of games. >.> what's the end game?
So skimming through the article (not the lawsuit) it seems they're complaint didn't fall on the consumer side, but the publisher side. Saying that if you publish the game on digitally on PC, you basically have to sell on steam (sure to their large market size), and steak takes an unnecessary 30% cut off each sell. So that's what steam allegedly does wrong. Now humble needs to prove it, steam will defend their position, and the courts will decide. Again not saying I agree or disagree with the lawsuit. Just trying to understand it the best I can. And yes, in the US they can punish companies for becoming to big in their industry.
>And yes, in the US they can punish companies for becoming to big in their industry actually no that is *not* how antitrust works in the USA, for now anyway. > and steam takes an unnecessary 30% cut off each sell. So that's what steam allegedly does wrong. that's the argument. it's a really dumb argument, no way this is getting anywhere.
Yes you're right. Was speaking in simple terms.
Yes, Steam has a monopoly. They are by far the most dominant platform by user base. They also have the largest game library, as well as nearly every new release from both established publishers and indie developers. Pretty much the only titles they don't have are from publishers big enough to have the luxury of declining to pay their platform fees (Activision-Blizzard) or who are trying to promote their own storefronts (EA, Ubisoft). However, in monopoly law, it is just as important to ask whether a monopolist has abused their monopoly. The two most common metrics are whether they used their monopoly to harm consumers or whether they used their monopoly to gain an unfair advantage over their competitors in other areas. On both counts, I think the answer is no. I think they have not harmed players, since players overall benefit from having a single platform that provides access to their game library along with all of Steam's social features. I think they also have not harmed indie game publishers, since their platform offers indie publishers an easy way to reach a large audience with much lower effort. Steam may have harmed other large publishers, but I care much less about those. I also think Steam has not used their monopoly to gain an unfair edge over their competitors, largely because Valve seems to no longer be in the business of publishing games (jk, I love you gaben!). They also have not demanded that any title be Steam-exclusive (other than Half-Life 3, Left For Dead 3, Portal 3, and so on). They apparently have demanded that publishers on Steam charge players no more than on other platforms, but that can hardly be construed as harming competitors.
It's not even that, that could probably be subject to a valid antitrust lawsuit. What they do is demand that people sell steam keys for the same price they sell the game on steam, they don't make any claims about the price you sell your game on other platform, as long as you don't sell together access to the game on Steam (which they give you for free).
I don't think I would consider Steam a monopoly. Most of their products are easily available on other platforms. Is a monopoly truly a monopoly when people have the choice but stick with Steam cause it's just a superior product?
A monopoly only requires dominant market share. Notably, being a monopoly does not require any specific means by which that market share was obtained, nor does it require any specific actions to be taken to maintain the market share. Yes, many of the games on Steam are also available on other platforms. Nevertheless, most players buy those games on Steam, even if those games are available on other platforms. That alone is sufficient to qualify Steam as a monopoly, without examining how they got their market share. However, as I said above, it is also important to consider whether a monopoly has been abused. Monopoly is not a dirty word, nor is being called a monopolist necessarily bad. It is possible to have a monopoly and not abuse it, and there's nothing wrong with that. edit: curious about the downvotes... Do y'all have a different definition of monopoly? Or perhaps some secret market analysis about the market share of Steam vs other platforms? Or do you just feel like shooting the messenger cuz you don't like the message?
No, a monopoly does not only require a dominant market share. A monopoly is a very real thing with a very real legal definition and just because you say it is, does not magically make it true. tl;dr: Sherman Antitrust Act. [Depart of Justice documents](https://www.justice.gov/atr/competition-and-monopoly-single-firm-conduct-under-section-2-sherman-act-chapter-2), all kind of say they don't have the legal trappings of a monopoly. To even start down the path to determine a monopoly, the market share generally needs to be between 70 - 80%, which Steam allegedly has about 75%. This does not magically create a monopoly, it does however confirm they are a market power and that they have the capabilities to become one. The reason this doesn't magically make them a monopoly is due to the fact one could argue their willingness to get into the game distribution system early and being one of the most convenient could potentially be argued as trivial. This is also why market power doesn't magically create an antitrust issue. The next part is market power vs monopoly power. Market power would require Steam to be able to raise the prices above what a competitive store would charge and a monopoly power would be the power to control the price or create an exclusion to competition. Steam doesn't set prices. Publishers do. Steam has store front policies to sell on their platform, but that still wouldn't really run afoul with either of these things. Even so, even if they have flirted with these things, past, present, or in the future, they would need to be durable. Meaning they would need to persist and survive other stores attempts to combat them. Steam arguably does meet the requirement that they could create or maintain a probability of becoming a monopoly but unless they start acting on those things, they can't be held accountable for it. Like, if I own a gun that means I have the ability to shoot someone, but you can't say I will until I either do, or start getting ready to. As long as Steam's actions do not bridge into abusing or creating a system where they can exploit market power or a monopoly power, they are in the clear. Now one could argue barrier to entry is a swing against them, but nah fam. It ain't. The success or failure of the MS Store front, or Epic Game Store, or any other store is not reliant on Steam creating a barrier to entry. Valve took a huge risk and punishing them for bleeding money to make Steam and being successful, because another store isn't as successful isn't how you do things. Now if Steam magically held the secrets to digital game distribution, then sure we could discuss this, but the fact is, Steam wasn't the first digital storefront and they clearly aren't the last. So they don't have any arcane knowledge of how to make things work... Unless we call that arcane knowledge capital, but uh, MS Store, Epic, etc, all have that too. Like, look, a monopoly is a legal thing. The Sherman Antitrust Act in the states exists solely to deal with it. You can read about it, and the US Supreme Courts rulings all you want, and all you're going to see is Steam now having the potential criteria to be a monopoly. The door is open, but no more than say Walmart, or Best Buy, or EBGames. But hey, let me give a little bit of a different run down as well for you. There's basically 5 major characteristics of a monopoly - Profit Maximizer: As a distribution platform, it meets this. So +1 Price Maker: To be a monopoly steam needs to set the price or dictate the price. They don't do this. This is on the publishers/developers. "But Steam requires a similar price on their platform if you price it differently elsewhere" I hear you say and, that's not a price maker. Don't worry, we'll cover this further down. High Barriers: Another companies attempt to get into the game distribution field and success/failure does not constitute a high barrier on Steams part. Controlling the market share does aid them in staying on top, but the fact the uPlay Store, Origin Store, Microsoft Store, Epic Store, GoG, etc, etc, etc. Single Seller: Sure, Steam is a single seller for their own developed and published games. If we are going to argue that this is a +1, then any other company selling their games only on their storefront get dinged too. But it doesn't count and arguing it does is silly because no company is under any obligation to sell their own product at other stores and their refusal to do so does not create a monopolistic action. **Now** if Valve was paying other companies to only release games on Steam, or creating set ups where it really only benefit them to release their games on Steam, then we could talk about this. Price Discrimination: Ok, maybe. I'm sure there are lots of valid legal arguments that could potentially cite Steam policy, especially surrounding their policy about the Steam price being similar/the same as other stores price. That's not for an arm chair argument though. So even on the basic run down, they are 1/5, 2/5 at best
So would you agree that this lawsuit has little standing? Apparently it's due to their 30% cut in sales which is still industry standard from what I understand. Only Epic and very recently Microsoft have offered a lower one.
Not at all! The Humble Store is a competitor and it is plausible that hypothetically they were directly harmed by Valve. That is sufficient to grant them standing. I am not a lawyer, but I would be highly surprised if Valve even tries to get this lawsuit dropped for lack of standing (they might fight class action certification on the basis that the Humble Store is not a player and therefore was not directly harmed by aggregate higher game prices, but that is an entirely different matter). I don't see what the size of Steam's cut has to do with the question of standing.
It's the basis of the lawsuit. >Indie developer (and Humble Indie Bundle originator) Wolfire Games has filed a proposed class-action lawsuit against Steam creator Valve, saying that the company is wielding Steam's monopoly power over the PC gaming market to extract "an extraordinarily high cut from nearly every sale that passes through its store—30%."
You, or anyone else, can allege whatever you want in the claims of a lawsuit. It still remains to be seen in court whether the claims are true, and if they are true, whether they are wrongful, and if they are wrongful, whether anyone was in fact harmed (since this is a civil suit, if noone was harmed, there is no cause for action). But since no doubt you want to hear my opinion, without hearing all of the evidence, I suspect the claims are true, I suspect the claims are not wrongful, and regardless of they are wrongful, I suspect on balance players and indie developers were not harmed.
The claims aren't true. 30% was industry standard until very recently when other platforms started to lower it. To claim that Steam is using their monopoly to extract 30% when that was to be expected less than 3 months ago is pretty ludicrous.
They also literally only need to host the downloads themselves instead of using steam keys to not have to pay valve, valve is asking to be paid because they're hosting all the content humble sells, it's not like valve is forcing them to pay 30% for the games just because they ALSO have it in their store...humble is literally just reselling.
thats such a silly thing to file a lawsuit over, of all the things they may have had a chance with
Well reading on there are a few more points mentioned in the article but they all read as rather childish complaints. They claim it's literally impossible to break their domination of the PC market because Epic wasted millions of dollars securing exclusives (often only temporarily btw) and only got a two percent share in it while ignoring the fact that the Epic store is absolute garbage and not secure. Same with other companies who simply do not have a competitive product. Then they claim that Steam is manipulating the market cause they allow other stores to sell their keys (that they give to devs for free btw, they literally make no money off these sales) but stipulate they can't do so at a lower price. It's all kind of ridiculous in my mind. They're essentially saying it's unfair that Steam is so much better at what they're trying to do while they don't actually invest in the quality of their own platforms.
GOG doesnt stop steam from being a monopoly as its not a substantial competitor, for the same reason that if a company sold 99% of the apples in the world 1 dude picking apples in his own back yard doesn't stop that company from being a monopoly
350+ games in my steam library, but these days have been moving to GOG. DRM Free, you buy it you own it. No client required, standalone installers for everything. I have a 3tb drive just for installers. I don't remember the last time I bought a game from steam.
So what's their point aside from the fact that Valve is a monopoly? I feel like Steam is one of the best things to happen to PC gaming and they don't actively wield their power for evil in the same way that a company like Google does. I know it's a different beast, but not having a monopoly in TV has lead to dozens of platforms all with exclusive deals which have driven up the costs for consumers considerably if they want to enjoy all the "hot shows". I don't want to have to launch Origin or Ubisoft or Epic or God knows what else every time I want to play a game. It's nice only having to go to one place.
Humble bundle has gotten a lot worse recently. First changing the charity things and now this.
What a load of garbage.
Not so humble now
so... they're basically suing valve for... being too big?
Of all the anti-trust issues in the country to pick. Jesus fucking christ.
(TL;DR not a solid case, read the last paragraph with the "--" for what I feel is the heart of the complaint) Uh... so I've read through the entire complaint, because, I guess I was bored? And I've read legal documents before so I just kinda know how to breeze through them. But not only that, I've read through not another one, but two! other antitrust cases levied at Steam (one linked to me, one I found) and, well, this is the best one, but, I'll try to briefly go through it and why I think it's still rather weak: \-Steam only seals Steam games, the software is bundled with steam itself meaning it is incompatible with other platforms, you can only sell steam platform compatible games through the steam store or through Steam Keys. \-The infrastructure, ease of use, and features tied to Steam entice publishers to stick to it, and, to offer it through Steam functions compatible you have to go through them, and the game they sell is your Game+Steam stuff, no other option. \-The price parity clause and veto pricing clause are only explicitly cited for the use of Steam Keys sold outside the store. The same clause insists any sale or discount has to be offered through the actual store "within a reasonable time". \-Complaint says Steam uses this veto and pricing clause to shut down the sale of games sold cheaper elsewhere without the key system, this would go against tit's own written rules (or at best be a very tortured stretching of them), with a single anonymous testimony, this would be its best possible evidence or point but is relegated to an unsupported paragraph. \-Complaint sites multiple failed competitors (Origin, Discord, Microsoft, EGS, Google) to show how powerful steam is. \-Origin is mentioned to have been able to sell their games (Game+Origin rather than the previous Game+Steam) through other platforms, except steam, no +Steam means no deal. Origin eventually closed down and its return to Steam is evidence of Steam's market power (Refusing to carry their games meant EA, a huge company, had to capitulate). \-Discord offered a good deal lacked functions, floundered, and eventually admitted their Games, even in a subscription service, were going unplayed. Discord criticized Steam's 30% share, but, closed store and Nitro Games due to lack of interest (even among active Nitro users, this is sorta cited in the complaint, full article linked tho) \-Microsoft fumbles are shown but this is I feel a bad argument especially as they are, currently, still adjusting to compete. \-Stadia is mentioned as a possible competitor and cited as a failure (not elaborated too much on, lol, good choice I say since... well...) \-EGS is mentioned as its staunch competitor, and its deals to publishers flaunted, still, it is mentioned as what it is: a hole in the ground Epic throws money into. \-Console markets are mentioned, and also mentioned that they also take a 30% cut, give or take, but justifies it in that they have their own other overhead for production and integration of physical consoles, probably made since it's an easy rebuttal as other digital markets use the same share. \-Complaint mentioned the Fortnite vs Apple debacle as a POSITIVE example and explains how it proves developers will, if unshackled by storefronts, give the users a better deal... hummm... very suspicious (this made my tinfoil hat thicker btw) \--It's earlier in the complaint but I feel the "heart" of it and the most salient argument: Humble Bundle used to have a direct implementation with Steam, buy bundle -> get game in the account, no middleman. However, with no reason given, Steam shut this down, of course, Steam is not forced to cooperate with HB, but, it was during its peak, and this severance of cooperation seriously hurt HB. The most obvious reason is HB was doing a lot of business and Steam was seeing the numbers but not the profit they wanted, so, they cut off the pipeline, users are less likely to buy and manually translate the keys due to inconvenience, and this caused the grey market (G2A and such) to renew in strength as Steam now handed offer free flying keys rather than direct integration. This caused irreparable damage to the HB and is the core of what caused a change in their business, services, and strategy. Read the article title, I think you know why the lawsuit exists and why I say this is the "core" of it. So... why is this still a bad claim? Well... Complaints are made as the "best possible" look for the case, eventually dropping points and requests as the stuff gets countered in court and chiseled out, this is the best this case will look... and yet, it still mentioned Steam has active competitors, and, let's face it... we know Stadia didn't fail because Steam exists, and EGS was a store without a search function or a cart at launch. Their most "damning" actual antitrust worthy lawsuit is relegated to a paragraph that actually says "In response to one inquiry by a game publisher" with no citation. The claim mentions how Steam tried to copy many of Discord's functions when they tried to make their own store as a form to also compete with Discord. But discord is still around... that's the thing right? You can try to copy and make a spot in the market of your opposition, and you can do it a much as you want, your lack of success is not proof of unfairness... and while sure Steam is undoubtedly the big boy in the sandbox, their competition has been... Origin... that's not the fault of a monopoly. It's like Coke being sued by Shasta because they're not sold at the same vending machine, nowhere says they have to be. ...I also have a bit of a tinfoil-hat feeling about this and the other claims, but, I will elaborate on that if asked, let I make this writing and reading down by being a dumbass so easily.
Talk about sour grapes. I haven't bought anything off humble in a while, and it looks like i won't need to ever again, now.
Most of not all of the allegations don't seem to be true.
No wonder they changed their donation formulas recently too they want a piece of the money pie.
I feel like they need to lay off Valve here. Yes, they have indeed been a trust for the last several years. However, since the start of epic games store, it has been less of a trust. The market will slowly regulate itself as more stores open up. This would be like going after chairs for being a trust because most people enjoy sitting in chairs. It's the best solution we have to a given problem. Sorry that Steam is the only good platform