There’s a difference between being feature-rich and popular and being a monopoly.
Call me when Steam is buying competing stores to shut them down.
Now, in terms of PC gaming monopolies, let me introduce you to “Microsoft”.
Seriously. Part of the reason they’re even so popular is because they aren’t actively pursuing profit maxxing/enshittification business practices to corner the market and consolidate market share like every other one of these blood sucking cretins. They really are one of the extremely short list of corporations that ACTUALLY win in the marketplace because their product really is just that good. Running the steam deck with Linux, contributing to the development of Wine/Proton, and telling Microsoft to kick rocks has made me a Gaben fanboy for life. If Steam was the ONLY way you could purchase PC games, I’d honestly be fine with that, as long as Valve remains a private company under the iron fist of Mister Newell.
Remaining a privately held company is really the only protection from enshittification. Not a guarantee, mind you.
Well they are certainly the exception, not the rule. I’ll take it, but we definitely got cosmically lucky to have steam exist in this timeline the way it does. 99/100 times it’s a soulless shit factory that’s entirely reflective of the AAA industry as a whole.
Il Epic had free cloud saves and more social aspects they would be a much more appealing option, especially because they are much friendlier towards indie devs since they demand a much lower service fee. Steam is just the best for consumers right now
Also if they didn’t have an irrational hatred for Linux.
heroic launcher to the rescue!
And all the fixation is on Epic vs Steam, but it has also been Epic vs GOG. Since their exclusive deals were prevented from being released on GOG too. Probably since people would actually be willing to biy from GOG if steam wasn’t available with how hated epic is, and would have led to GOG growing as opposed to Epic.
A lot of people requested that DARQ be made available on GOG. I was happy to work with GOG to bring the game to their platform. I wish the Epic Store would allow indie games to be sold there non-exclusively, as they do with larger, still unreleased games (Cyberpunk 2077), so players can enjoy what they want: a choice.
Steam does force the sellers on their platform to not give better discounts elsewhere. So basically if you see a game that’s 20% off on steam and it is ATL, you won’t find it 30% off anywhere else.
Not necessarily a monopoly but definitely not allowing competitive pricing.
Now that I think about it, it’s probably why Epic has to go with the “timed exclusive” approach instead of just giving you a bigger discount.
Not actually true. They only require price parity for steam keys. Basically don’t sell steam copies anywhere cheaper than on steam. Any other copy you can sell for whatever price.
They only require price parity for steam keys. Basically don’t sell steam copies anywhere cheaper than on steam.
Even that isn’t true which a quick search on isthereanydeals before buying games will show a lot of times when it comes to steam key prices.
Recent example is ARC Raiders. https://isthereanydeal.com/game/arc-raiders/info/
Current best price is 15% off for $34.17 versus $39.99 on Steam. And all time low was $31.92.
People are missing out on deals if they assume Steam store price is the lowest price for Steam games.
But the key price is the same, they giving you a discount. They can’t change the price of 100$ to 80$ without giving a 20% discount.
I linked their own guidelines regarding steam key prices. They do require price parity with steam for steam keys. (with some exceptions)
I believe the clause applies to any storefronts as it operates on the MFN pricing principle.
But let’s say it doesn’t, and you’re correct and you could buy the same game on itch, gog, humble, epic, M$ store, ubi store, whatever else.
Did you ever actually see any of the stores promote better pricing on their first party platform? I haven’t.
Did you ever see assassins creed games being 5$ cheaper if you buy them on the ubi store as an example?
Same as the above for humble, epic, EA, Microsoft?
That’d be a pretty effective way to drive people to your storefront and drive first party sales with additional profit to the first party… and yet for some reason that practice apparently doesn’t exist.
I am almost 100% sure that’s not done out of the goodness of the shareholders hearts and has more to do with the legal spaghet of it all.
But at the end of the day the above is speculation, I have no concrete way to prove it one way or the other besides the limited observations that I’ve made over the years.
They don’t want to drive you to your storefront so that you get the games cheaper. They want to sell for the same price without paying commission. They want to pocket the difference, not give it to you.
I’ve never seen a reliable source display steam has price parity. Their steam key price parity however is very clearly displayed. https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/keys
What do you mean it doesn’t exist? Epic got me to download their launcher because they were selling gta 5 for free. How could I have found that out if I only play on steam???
Did you ever see assassins creed games being 5$ cheaper if you buy them on the ubi store as an example?
I had tracked ubisoft vs steam prices over the years, and usually if you wanted to pay less Ubisoft was the way to go for Ubisoft games.
Like Far Cry 6 $6 all time low on Ubisoft store and $11.99 all time low on Steam.
Good resource, thanks
Yeah its saved me money over the years. I’m realizing in this thread lot of people didn’t know Steam prices isn’t always the best price and missing out on lot of discounts.
Not true. I just checked the first game currently discounted I know on GOG’s front page: Ghost Runner. It’s at -75% (7.49€) on GOG but full price (29.99€) on Steam.
Price parity doesn’t mean no discounts. All games in all platforms are the same fucking base price, each store front applies different discounts for different products based on their metrics. The other guy is right, EGS doesn’t get 30% cut like steam but their games is not 15%-20% cheaper, if they give you a 15% once in the blue moon doesn’t mean shit.
Compare to lowest all time price on steam, not current price. Pretty sure it’s going to come out to the same.
Goal post.
Isthereanydeals. Frequently see steam keys available for cheaper than it is on Steam.
Recommend using it as a resource before buying games since it tracks prices, so no need to spend more than necessary.
Example is recently released ARC Raiders where you can save a few bucks. Current best is 15% off for a Steam key.
https://isthereanydeal.com/game/arc-raiders/info/
I’ve often wondered who is paying full price buying from Steam at launch over sometimes buying a Steam key from another storefront for 10-20% less. Guess its people who think games aren’t sold cheaper than on Steam.
I think there is a distinction to be made between being a monopoly and doing anti-competitive behavior.
Steam hasn’t done any anti-competitive behavior that I am aware of, but they do have enough market power to be considered a monopoly. Consider how companies like EA and Activision tried to maintain competing platforms but caved because those platforms were not viable compared to Steam. That’s monopoly power.
Failing to make a product that doesn’t suck shit does not make a monopoly for your competitor.
In fact, Steam is de facto not a monopoly because of the very existence of GOG. EA and Activision tried to break in to this arena but failed to provide a product that actually switched people off of steam, because they failed to provide a comparable experience to steam. GOG did, and they’re doing fine.
GoG has, like, 1/5th the market share of Steam. It’s not nearly big enough to prevent Steam from having monopoly power. If Steam came out with a policy saying that games could not be on both Steam and GoG, the vast majority of devs would release on Steam. That’s monopoly power which Steam has, regardless of whether they are currently abusing it or not.
If they do anti-competitive behaviour then that would make them a monopoly.
“Steam is so popular because they’re good not because they’re a monopoly”
“Oh yeah? Well what if Steam was a monopoly? They would be a monopoly then right!”
Even if there were literally no other competitors, GOG holding 1/6th of the market share (your words) absolutely precludes Steam from being a monopoly.
You’re using a different definition of monopoly from what I’m using. To quote Wikipedia:
In economics, a monopoly is a single seller. In law, a monopoly is a business entity that has significant market power, that is, the power to charge overly high prices, which is associated with unfair price raises.
I’m using the latter of those definitions. I don’t think it’s particularly useful to only consider it a monopoly when there are literally no competitors. I think it is useful to consider it a monopoly when it has dominant market power. Steam’s estimated 75-80% market share is dominant market power.
By this logic Google isn’t a search monopoly because DuckDuckGo exists, despite Google buying default placement in Safari, Firefox, Chrome, etc to make sure no other search provider can compete, with their bribe to Apple alone totaling $20 billion a year to maintain their search dominance. What do you think monopoly power is if not that?
Can you describe where Steam has done anything even approaching that, ever?
EA and Activision stores didn’t fail because Steam bought them out and bullied them out of the market, they failed because they were trash products. Steam doesn’t buy “default placement” in anything. They just have a good product that people want to use over alternatives.
Point out a situation in which Steam has acted anti-competitive and I might agree that you have a point, but I can’t think of any situations to call out here.
Whether something is a monopoly or not is independent of anti-competitive practices. It’s about market power.
If there’s a genuinely good product that’s popular because it’s good. There’s no need to step in and give shittier products more share in the market.
The point in breaking up monopolies is to be more fair for consumers. If you want to say they’re technically a monopoly because they have a large share of the market then fine. But I don’t see that as a bad thing until it starts abusing its power.
I agree that Steam is pretty good as it is, and there are certainly more pressing concerns. However, in an ideal world, what Steam does should probably be handled by the public sector because it’s a natural monopoly. People like only having to go to one place to find their games, but that place doesn’t have to be controlled by a for-profit corporation.
yes, it is “is independent of anti-competitive practices”, a monopoly is when there is only one company providing a product or service
Um, there is more than one type of anticompetitive practice? Amazon uses predatory pricing to drive companies out of business, Microsoft uses tying to sell Teams, Google uses self-preferencing for their own services in search results, Facebook acquired Instagram rather than compete with them, etc.
One of Valve’s favorite anticompetitive cudgels is requiring “most favored nation” clauses in their contracts, prohibiting devs from selling for less on other storefronts (which Amazon also has used).
Um, there is more than one type of anticompetitive practice? Amazon uses predatory pricing to drive companies out of business, Microsoft uses tying to sell Teams, Google uses self-preferencing for their own services in search results, Facebook acquired Instagram rather than compete with them, etc.
None of which are related to Steam nor has Steam done anything resembling any of these examples to my knowledge.
One of Valve’s favorite anticompetitive cudgels is requiring “most favored nation” clauses in their contracts, prohibiting devs from selling for less on other storefronts (which Amazon also has used).
Valve prohibits people from selling steam keys for less on other storefronts which I think is perfectly reasonable. You can list your game on Steam for $20 and distribute it on Itch for $5 or even free and Steam has zero problem with this, so long as you aren’t distributing steam keys via that storefront. This is to try and prevent a developer from leveraging Steam for advertisement purposes but making all their actual sales off-platform.
theres basically one anti conpetitive measure they hold primarily, and its the one that states the listing price of a game must be the same on all platforms policy. stops devs from having a lower listing price on other platforms.
other than that its usually other platforms shooting their selves.
This “most favored nation” clause in contracts is huge! It means that even if another store takes half of Steam’s cut (say, 15% vs 30%), the game can’t be sold for less, meaning other rival stores can never compete on price. In other words, Steam drives up prices for games economy-wide. Amazon does something similar, and this was part of the basis the FTC’s antitrust lawsuit against them.
Steam drives up prices for games economy-wide.
You must be joking
I’m pretty sure that that only applies to steam keys being sold on other sites. If it’s being distributed in some other form, it can be cheaper.
I think they were viable but nobody trusts EA and Activision with keeping the game they buy.
but they do have enough market power to be considered a monopoly
Bullshit. Being the most popular platform does not automatically make a monopoly, this is armchair lawyer nonsense.
It’s true that I am not a lawyer, so feel free to not take what I say as what the law says. I think that the law certainly should consider Steam to be a monopoly with its level of market power, even if it doesn’t currently.
From what I have heard from actual lawyers, monopolies are not currently illegal under US law anyways. They’re only illegal when combined with anticompetitive practices. That’s my best understanding as a non-lawyer, anyways.
Words don’t matter. Do well and have a platform that most prefer? You’re a monopoly. People don’t realize that to be a monopoly you must be the only source and actively prevent access to or other sources of the same product. How many of those using the term monopoly regarding Steam have GOG Galaxy, Epic, Battle.net, and etc. installed on their machines, ya think.
Being the best does not a monopoly make!
Edit: Further, and speaking of Epic, I never heard of Steam paying devs to pull their games from other platforms for exclusivity deals.
They have a functional monopoly on game launchers, but it isn’t illegal to have a monopoly — it’s only illegal to use that monopoly for anti-competitive actions.
A monopoly in law doesn’t mean total (100%) market control; it means having the power to control prices or exclude competition. Courts often refer to this as monopoly power.
A monopoly could exist with as little as 50% of the market, or even lower. Steam has around 70–80%, which is easily enough to be considered a monopoly. However, you could argue that despite their large market share, they can’t truly control the market, since it’s their goodwill and consumer-friendly behavior that earned them that share in the first place — and if they ever tried to abuse it, people might go elsewhere.
Personally, I don’t really believe that. Considering your entire library is tied to their platform, they could pull all kinds of shady tactics if they wanted to. But it’s an argument.
As far as I’m concerned, Steam is the least evil of the major corporations. I can overlook the secret gambling ring and possible dark-money smuggling complicity because they seem to be a net benefit to consumers, and the harm mostly falls on those complicit in the scheme — as well as on China and Russia.
Edit, fixed spelling.
72% of devs have no clue what the word monopoly means. That would mean that Steam is the only store selling PC games on the market, but that’s not the case. Hell, the article itself mentions several:
However, it also noted that developers have started utilising other platforms including the Epic Game Store and the Xbox PC Games store.
Almost half of those surveyed (48%) have distributed a title to both stores, while 10% have used GOG and 8% have used Itch.io.
So, a monopoly? Most definitely not. A market leader or holder of a vast majority? Yes.
That’s not what that word means. Zero competition is virtually impossible unless government is strongly enforcing it
Do you also think Google isn’t a search monopoly because Bing exists? This is a very bad argument that completely ignores market power.
Well, yes? According to Merriam-Webster:
1: exclusive ownership through legal privilege, command of supply, or concerted action
2: exclusive possession or control <no country has a monopoly on morality or truth—Helen M. Lynd>
3: a commodity controlled by one party <had a monopoly on flint from their quarries—Barbara A. Leitch>
4: one that has a monopoly < The government passed laws intended to break up monopolies.:>
I’m not arguing that Steam doesn’t have overwhelming market power, it most certainly does. But key words here are “exclusive” and “one party” and Steam does not control the PC market exclusively, nor are they the only party on the market.
The question isn’t so much whether a company is a monopoly, or part of a duopoly, or oligopoly, but whether their market power lets them coerce their rivals, suppliers, customers, etc. It’s a common misconception that a company needs 100% of a market before they can exert monopoly power (as a seller), and the threshold is even lower for monopsony power (as a buyer), which is common in labor markets with powerful employers, for example.
Legal thresholds for application of anti-monopoly laws have historically been quite low as well. For example, in Brown Shoe Co. v. United States in 1962, the US Supreme Court approved blocking a merger between Brown, a company that manufactured less than 6% of shoes in the US, and Kinney, a company that sold only 2% of shoes! And that actually seems like the right approach, since the Clayton Act, for example, doesn’t only prohibit acquiring 100% of a market (which would render it worthless), but blocks any acquisition when “the effect of such acquisition may be substantially to lessen competition.”
Steam has a monopoly: yes. Steam, like apple, takes a cut from all payments in the store, and micro transactions. Considering how Steam is a company, and could just be evil, and bad, like Google, it’s:
-Contributions and implementation of the opensource software Proton-Ge, which lets me just download a windows game and play it, off steam, and is also available, free & opensource on other platforms like Lutris. -Regular deals which make it the best place to buy games, if you choose to do so. -Steamdeck
Make it a (mostly) positive force, imho. However, a billion dollar company being able to do discounts below any small game distribution companies, is bad.
Unlike Google or Apple, I don’t think steam will remove your game for putting it on GOG or Epic, how is it even a monopoly? you’re not forced to sell there
It is a functional monopoly. I would be shocked if wasnt also a monopsony effect going on here where many devs are disproportionately getting their revenue from Steam and as such are functionally mandated a Steam release.
I mean, provide evidence that it doesn’t? Why would we have to seek dev opinions to prove this?
I don’t know if I would say they’re a monopoly there are other options/store fronts out there…it’s just that the vast majority outside of GOG suck. in fact they all suck OTHER than Steam and GOG.
And as a Linux user…I ain’t got much of a choice. Steam, now, just works for me. I don’t even have to toggle the compatibility option anymore or hell even mess around with proton if I don’t want to. install steam via whatever package manager or flatpak and i’m off to the races.
Anything other than Steam is unlikely to work. EA, Epic, and Microsoft have all essentially told me they don’t want my business simply because I use Linux.
As a Linux user, exactly as well.
This!
I think it qualifies as a monopoly because of the network effect of having so many users and so many games on it. Especially on the developer side, it’s basically mandatory to release your game on Steam because the number of users you can reach is so much higher than any other platform.
That being said, it’s not a monopoly that most people have a problem with because they generally continue to serve users well even though they have enough market power that they could enshittify things. If they were a public company they almost certainly would have done that by now.
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If Steam suddenly introduced a policy that prohibited devs from selling on other platforms alongside Steam, most devs would choose Steam because they would make way more money on Steam than elsewhere.
The power to do that is monopoly power, regardless of whether Steam is abusing that power currently. I think that their behavior on the whole is pretty good, but that doesn’t make them not a monopoly.
You can sell your game for different prices on different platforms, you just can’t sell steam keys that way. If you purchase a game on Itch and it gives you a steam key, that’s still a steam purchase and is subject to this restriction. If you purchase a game on Itch and it hands you an installer then you can buy that game at whatever price they want to sell it at.
And yet Steam keys have been sold for less than Steam prices for over a decade.
Like the recently released ARC Raiders.
https://isthereanydeal.com/game/arc-raiders/info/
All time low of $31.92 vs $39.99 on Steam. Current low is $34.17 for a Steam key.
Developers aren’t forced to exclusively ship on Steam or not at all.
That’s just not true in practical terms. If you want your game to be discovered and you don’t have a massive advertising budget, it’s not a serious option to try to forego selling on Steam while staying in business as a game developer. That’s like saying Amazon isn’t an ecommerce monopoly because you’re not “forced” to sell there, even though that would mean bankruptcy and irrelevance for most sellers.
fyi heroic launcher installs and runs epic and gog games beautifully
epic and uplay is a bit more complicated, but with a bit of fiddling, lutris worked well enough for me
unfortunately (?) no solution for microsoft/xbox stuff yet, if they’re not on steam i mean
that said i’m not giving any money these companies (except for gog ofc), but free stuff is free
they do, and it’s all going to shit the moment gaben dies and is replaced by investor vultures.
Libraries should host a digital store front for the people’s games.
Sure, but it’s well earned. The rest doesn’t do shit. When Microsoft dominated, they made things worse.
72% of devs work for some giant corp or doesn’t know what monopoly means. Gotcha.
Do you know what monopoly means?
72% of devs meaning 72% of developers = people or 72% of developer studios = a bunch of suits?
75% of respondents were senior managers of C-suite level.
Ah ok, so pointless people. They could ask an AI…
Note the survey is also posted by a company whose service is to help people publish on multiple storefronts at once.
It’s amazing how many people don’t actually understand what a monopoly is. Every time the topic comes up you see people say things like “well there’s more than one store therefore it’s not a monopoly.” That’s never been the actual use of the word in practice. If that were true it would be so stupidly easy to circumvent monopoly laws and regulations. I mean more than it already is of course.
your own source says
A monopoly is when a single company or entity creates an unreasonable restraint of competition in a market. The term “monopoly” is often used to describe instances where there is a single seller of a good in a market.
also wikipedia
“A monopoly (from Greek μόνος, mónos, ‘single, alone’ and πωλεῖν, pōleîn, ‘to sell’) is a market in which one person or company is the only supplier of a particular good or service. A monopoly is characterized by a lack of economic competition to produce a particular thing, a lack of viable substitute goods, and the possibility of a high monopoly price well above the seller’s marginal cost that leads to a high monopoly profit.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopolythe problem with the “steam is a monopoly” argument is that they are not abusing their position, like the companies that got into hot water before (like microsoft with internet explorer, trying to push web standard their way)
Yes, when an entity creates an unreasonable restraint of competition in the market. As Steam has an overwhelming control of the market that absolutely qualifies. Also I’m going to go ahead and quote the rest since you left it out for some reason. Probably because it was devastating to your argument.
A monopoly is when a single company or entity creates an unreasonable restraint of competition in a market. The term “monopoly” is often used to describe instances where there is a single seller of a good in a market. In a legal context, the term monopoly is also used to describe a variety of market conditions that are not monopolies in the truest sense. For instance, the term monopoly may be referring to instances where:
- There are only two sellers of a given good (duopoly)
- There are very few sellers of a given good (oligopoly)
- There is a single buyer of a given good (monopsony)
- There are only two buyers of a given good (duopsony)
- There are very few buyers of a given good (oligopsony)
- There are many buyers or sellers, but one actor has enough market share to dictate prices (near monopolies)
In essence, the term monopoly may be used any time that a market for a good is controlled by a limited number of actors.
so okay the first 5 is irrelevant (right?), so it’s a “near monopoly”, one actor dictates the prices
but it’s ea and the like floating 100$ games, valve is just taking their 30% cut of whatever people ask, and do their own thing. other platforms can do what they want on their own platform, as long as they’re not selling steam keys.
i’m not buying the “market is controlled by steam” argument
i get that as a dev, if you want the best exposure on pc, your only realistic choice is to sell on steam, because it’s so popular, but many people start out on itch, and when they get big enough, launch on steam. and they’re still on itch too.All right the fact that you just said you have no choice but to sell on Steam has pretty much invalidated all the other parts of your argument. That alone is enough.
Also you might want to check a little bit about steams practices when it comes to pricing. They have a lot more influence on pricing than you seem to imagine.
i didn’t say steam was the only choice, in fact, i just described another way that many devs choose
regarding the price: is it steam that keeps raising them?
Or what Google is planning to do with Android wanting to require verification for non Google Play apps so they can gatekeep what can be installed on the entire OS even if its not even their app market.
Boo fucking hoo. Market can try and compete instead of using shady ways to agitate players to join their subpar service.
Nobody hates on Steam being a monopoly. Devs should thank Valve that their policy decreases piracy drastically.
If all monopolies would be like Steam, we would have no arguments against monopolies.
Nobody hates on Steam being a monopoly
That’s the problem imho. Right now they are “benevolent monopoly” for most of it’s users, except:
- currency conversions (famously Poland has the highest game prices on Steam in the world because Steam does not want to update the currency rates).
- innovation (Steam does not innovate Steam, they r&d othe products)
- accessibility (no way to make fonts bigger) (Those are my issues with it, there’s definitely more)
We know since at least 70’s, that when a company hits 4% market share, it stops innovating and competing with other companies, because buying the competition out and increasing the market share is safer and higher return (every 5% increase was 10% increase in profit, because they have to compete less).
Steam is naturally the only platform gamers care about because they’re the only platform that acturally targers gamers, all other platforms target devs (except GOG who targets gamers that specifically want offline copies without DRM)
They have the largest share and can direct the market/development, no question, but they not a monopoly. I think GOG has a good shot to complete as time carries on. At least while Gabe is still alive, they’ve been relatively ethical.
If the choice of largest developer platform is between Steam and companies like Epic, EA, or Microsoft, Steam still looks like a better alternative.
Yeah other than gog and itch every other platform is terrible. Epic gives a bigger share to devs and gives away a lot of free games, but they’re a publicly traded company trying to buy their way into the market so they can enshittify.
Basically, there isn’t a moat around pc game stores, but competitors aren’t even trying to be as nice as steam, and many publishers don’t publish to the best alternative because they want to use DRM (gog)
Epic gives a bigger share to devs and gives away a lot of free games, but they’re a publicly traded company trying to buy their way into the market so they can enshittify.
220+ free games in the library. One paid game that was an exclusive that wasn’t worth it in the end. No other transactions. Haven’t done the math, but in retail prices, that’s a lot of money to piss away hoping I’ll spend anything more.
Sure is! Didn’t say their strategy was working lol
I buy games on GOG when they’re available, but it seems like their market share is getting smaller as time goes on.
That said, the barrier to entry for a Steam competitor is non-existent, so they may never really be able to have a true monopoly. They can still have problematic levels of influence, though. I’m sincerely worried about what direction Valve will take after Gaben retires or dies.
They have the largest share and can direct the market/development
That means they’re a monopoly. Having some small fry competitors doesn’t make you not a monopoly.
Steam has so many features built-in like steam input, remote play [together], the forums with guides and stuff while most other platfors are relatively barebones, I’m not sure all stores have regional pricing either, they say Steam is a monopoly but they have done a lot to gain their market share for better or for worse
Steam remains on top because they remain the best. Can’t say I’d happily switch to a different platform given the games in my library but I’m open to it if the store provides a better experience
Came here to rant similarly. Just because they’re the biggest in the market does not mean they have a monopoly. There are plenty of options available, no one is locked into using or selling on steam.
“Lock-in” doesn’t make it a monopoly; market share does, and Steam dominates there. So much so that EA gave up on offering things exclusively on Origin.
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