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Nioxic ,

He has 2 sons

maybe they can take over - and not fuck it up (they literally have to do nothing to achieve success!)

rickyrigatoni ,

Can’t even count to three when it comes to sons either.

CaptKoala ,

Valve is numerically challenged.

cordlesslamp ,

And that one “old fat guy” is constantly under attack from degenerates because “sTeAm mOnoPoLy”.

AceFuzzLord ,

Steam/Valve is pretty much one of the only companies I actually am perfectly willing to let be a monopoly as they currently stand. Especially since they have come a long ways towards making gaming so much more accessible to Linux users, like me, who don’t know how to take full advantage of wine.

Spedwell ,

I don’t understand this mentality. If we oppose monopolistic sales platforms when it’s Amazon, Google Play, or the Apple store why should we turn a blind eye when suddenly we like a particular company.

I’m not contesting that Steam offers the best user experience by a mile (it truly beats Epic and Gog by miles), but that doesn’t erase the downsides of having a single entity with a grip on the entire market.

DragonTypeWyvern ,

Because it isn’t a monopoly, shut up already.

Grofit ,

I don’t think it’s quite as simple as “let’s crack down on steam like other monopolies” as what do you crack down on?

They do little to no anti competitive behaviour, clutching at straws would be that they require you to keep price parity on steam keys (except on sales).

All these other monopolies do lots of shady stuff to get and maintain their monopoly, so you generally want to stop them doing those things. Steam doesn’t do anything shady to maintain it’s monopoly it just carries on improving it’s platform and ironically improving the users experience and other platforms outside of their own.

Like what do you do to stop steam being so popular outside of just arbitrarily making them shitter to make the other store fronts seem ok by comparison?

The 30% cut is often something cited and maybe that could be dropped slightly, but I’m happy for them to keep taking that cut if they continue to invest some of it back into the eco system.

Look at other platforms like Sony, MS who take 30% to sell on their stores, THEN charge you like £5 a month if you want multiplayer and cloud saves etc. Steam just gives you all this as part of the same 30%.

Epic literally does anti competitive things like exclusivity and taking games they have some stake in off other store fronts or crippling their functionality.

Steam has improved how I play games, it has cloud saves, virtual controllers, streaming, game sharing, remote play together, VR support, Mod support and this is all part of their 30%, the other platforms take same and do less, or take less but barely function as a platform.

Anti monopoly is great when a company is abusing it’s position, but I don’t feel Valve is, they are just genuinely good for pc gaming and have single handily made PC gaming a mainstream platform.

Spedwell ,

They do little to no anti competitive behaviour, clutching at straws would be that they require you to keep price parity on steam keys (except on sales).

It is very much not clutching at straws to claim that. That policy is a major element of the Wolfire v. Valve case. You can also look at how despite charging a 12% platform fee, Epic Games Store does not sell games 18% cheaper.

It’s an abuse of Steam’s established market share and consumer habits to coerce publishers into not offering consumers a fair price on other platforms. It very literally stops EGS from competing on price, which is pretty much the only area where Epic can beat out Steam, since Steam otherwise is much more convenient, provides more functionality, and has more community-generated content (i.e. workshop material).

It’s hard to say that isn’t anti-competitive, especially because such a policy is only effective due to Steam’s existing market share.

Epic literally does anti competitive things like exclusivity and taking games they have some stake in off other store fronts or crippling their functionality.

This is a fair complaint against Epic, I agree.

Grofit ,

Wolfire v valve was thrown out right? So they didn’t successfully prove valve were doing anything anti competition.

To my knowledge the price parity is only on steam keys sold elsewhere not for you selling a game on another storefront, happy to be shown evidence that isn’t the case.

In terms of what is a “fair deal” we could quibble about the 30% but that’s literally the only thing up for discussion right? And at the moment that’s an “industry standard” so by all means lower it if they can, I’m all for savings as a consumer, but not at the expense of the service they provide.

For example if Valve personally came to me and said “you can either have games 10% cheaper but we would have to retire X features” I would happily keep the features and forgo the discount.

Also being realistic if Valve were to drop their cut to 20% game prices wouldn’t change, the publishers would just pocket the difference, as we have seen with Epic.

Again most other mainstream platforms take 30% and while I do think they could ALL trim that down a bit, I don’t see why Valve should be the first one to cut back when they offer the most bang for buck, get Sony and MS to reduce their cut and start offering more basic features, then once the competition is ACTUALLY competing we can turn our eyes to Valve.

I think that sums up my perspective here, most storefronts are not trying to compete, they are just offering the bare minimum for same cut and then wondering why everyone wants to use the more feature rich store front… Why wouldnt you?

Spedwell , (edited )

Oh wow, lots to unpack here. Bear with me.

Wolfire v valve was thrown out right? So they didn’t successfully prove valve were doing anything anti competition.

AFAIK still ongoing, looks like most recent filings were on 06/12.

To my knowledge the price parity is only on steam keys sold elsewhere not for you selling a game on another storefront, happy to be shown evidence that isn’t the case.

The actual terms of the Steam Distribution Agreement are behind an NDA so we can’t publicly know for sure, but Wolfire alleges that it applies to non-key sales (see points 204, 205, 207 of the https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/Washington_Western_District_Court/2--21-cv-00563/Wolfire_Games_LLC_et_al_v._Valve_Corporation/docs/127.pdf)

In terms of what is a “fair deal” we could quibble about the 30% but that’s literally the only thing up for discussion right? And at the moment that’s an “industry standard” …

Bit of a chicken and egg situation. Is Steam charging 30% because that’s standard, or is the 30% standard because Steam charges it? Epic’s attempt at 12% at the very least indicates the “industry standard” is much higher than it has to be, which is a good indicator of non-competitive behavior.

There is some slop in this argument because obviously the quality of platforms could influence this; but that is a bit moot due to the price policy preventing competitive pricing (see below).

… so by all means lower it if they can, I’m all for savings as a consumer, but not at the expense of the service they provide.

For example if Valve personally came to me and said “you can either have games 10% cheaper but we would have to retire X features” I would happily keep the features and forgo the discount.

That’s great for you, but I’m sure we could find plenty of consumers who would make that trade. The choice should be available to them.

Also being realistic if Valve were to drop their cut to 20% game prices wouldn’t change, the publishers would just pocket the difference, as we have seen with Epic.

You can’t point to current publisher behavior on EGS, because their behavior at present is influenced by Valve’s price policy (called the “Platform Most Favored Nation” or “PMFN” clause in the court filing) which is the foundation of the anti-competitive case against Valve.

Re: concerns about publishers eating the difference. An ideal greedy publisher would drop the price on Epic by some amount in the middle—cheap enough to convince consumers to buy on Epic instead of Steam (since it yields more revenue to them) without making it too cheap that the difference in profit between a sale on Epic and a sale on Steam goes to 0.

This is how competition between platforms should work. It drives down the cost by some amount, but the publisher isn’t going to pass up the chance to profit where they can.

Again most other mainstream platforms take 30% and while I do think they could ALL trim that down a bit, I don’t see why Valve should be the first one to cut back when they offer the most bang for buck, get Sony and MS to reduce their cut and start offering more basic features, then once the competition is ACTUALLY competing we can turn our eyes to Valve.

I think that sums up my perspective here, most storefronts are not trying to compete, they are just offering the bare minimum for same cut and then wondering why everyone wants to use the more feature rich store front… Why wouldnt you?

I’m confused by your response here since this is addressed in my prior comment. Is there something not quite clear enough?

Steam clearly wins on features, the only metric to beat them on is price. Epic is trying to do so, but publishers are not actually lowering the cost on their platform because of Valve’s policies—policies which are only effective because a publisher cannot afford to be delisted from Steam due its large market share.

Grofit ,

There is too much to respond to all, will be interesting to see how the wolfire case continues then.

I just wanted to chime in on the last bit.

So as you say steam wins on features, and Epic and MS have both chosen not to compete on features. It’s not that they can’t, they both have the means and money to do so, they just don’t want to invest the money on the infrastructure incase it’s a big flop I guess.

Either way you are making out like the only valid perspective here is focusing on the game price, but as I said to me the feature set is VERY important. Literally the only reason I use steam over other platforms is the features, being able to use any controller and remap it to however I want. Knowing my saves can be transfered to any computer, streaming to the TV so the kids can play games on it etc.

I appreciate not everyone else uses these features, but some of us do, and this is why steam is the better platform. If MS let me stream games to my TV and use controllers properly etc I would happily get game pass, but their platform is rubbish, same for EGS.

This whole thing is just crap platforms complaining they can’t compete when they havent even tried, they just want the free publicity in the hope they can get more users “in the door”.

ltxrtquq ,

Sure, let’s look at that lawsuit.

Steam Key Price Parity Provision. Valve nominally allows game publishers to make some limited third-party sales of Steam-enabled games through its “Steam Keys” program. Steam Keys are alphanumeric codes that can be submitted to the Steam Gaming Platform by gamers to access a digital copy of the purchased game within the Steam Gaming Platform, even when the game is not purchased through the Steam Store. Steam Keys can be sold by rival distributors including the Humble Store, Amazon, GameStop, and Green Man Gaming.

But Valve has rigged the Steam Keys program so that it serves as a tool to maintain Valve’s dominance. Among other things, Valve imposes a price parity rule (the “Steam Key PriceParity Provision”) on anyone wanting to sell Steam Keys through an alternative distributor. Put explicitly by Valve, “We want to avoid a situation where customers get a worse offer on the Steam store.” But that is equivalent to preventing gamers from obtaining a better offer from a competing distributor. The effect of this rule is to stifle price competition.

Because of this rule, Valve can stop competing game stores from offering consumers a lower price on Steam-enabled games in order to shift volume from the Steam Store to their storefronts. Even if a rival game store were to charge game publishers a lower commission than Valve’s high 30% fee, the distributor would not gain more sales because the game publishers could not charge a lower price in its store. Game publishers and consumers suffer because this rule keeps Valve’s high 30% commission from being subject to competitive pressure.

This Price Parity Provision is one of the reasons why Valve has been able to continue to charge an inflated 30% commission for many years, even as that commission is plainly above the levels that would prevail in a competitive market. Competition would normally force such an inflated commission to come down to competitive levels—but Valve’s restraints prevent those competitive forces from operating as they would in a free market.

Because of Valve’s restraint, publishers cannot utilize alternative distributors to avoid the 30% tax that Valve has set for the market. Thus, they reluctantly market their games primarily through the dominant Steam Store where Valve takes its 30% fee. While several distributors have tried to compete with Valve by charging lower commissions on Steam Keys, those efforts have largely failed to make a dent in the Steam Store’s market share because publishers using those distributors had to charge the same inflated prices they set on the Steam Store.

Moreover, even if a game publisher wanted to scale up its use of Steam Keys to promote competition, Valve has made it clear that it would shut down such efforts. When Valve recognizes that a game publisher is selling a significant volume of Steam Keys relative to its Steam Store sales, Valve can, at its own discretion, threaten the game publisher and refuse to provide more Steam Keys. Thus, Valve uses the Steam Key program as another tool to ensure that the vast majority of sales take place on the Steam Store, where Valve gets its 30% commission on nearly every sale.

So if you want to sell steam keys, you need to offer a similar deal on steam as you would wherever you’re selling those steam keys. This doesn’t apply to other storefronts like GOG, Epic, the Ubisoft store, the EA store or the Windows store, this is only about selling steam keys. So if you want to avoid giving Valve a cut of the sale while still using their platform to distribute your game, Valve is going to get upset and take action to prevent you from doing that.

There is also a section about

Price Veto Provision. Valve also requires game publishers to agree to give Valve veto power over their pricing in the Steam Store and across the market generally (the “Price Veto Provision”). Valve selectively enforces this provision to review pricing by game publishers on PC Desktop Games that have nothing to do with the Steam Gaming Platform at all. Through this conduct, prices set in the Steam Store serve as a benchmark that leads to inflated prices for virtually all PC Desktop Games.

which I think was the focus of a different lawsuit that mostly talked about a Most Favored Nation clause. This one is a little more complicated, but this lawsuit ended up getting dismissed. I’m not even close to being a lawyer so I don’t know why exactly, but this video seems to make a pretty good argument for why this isn’t a good legal argument. To summarize: there isn’t actually any proof that this kind of clause is actually anti-competitive and violates anti-trust laws. There’s also no telling whether or not other storefronts have similar conditions in place, because apparently these kind of Most Favored Nation clauses are fairly standard in some industries.

Also being realistic if Valve were to drop their cut to 20% game prices wouldn’t change, the publishers would just pocket the difference, as we have seen with Epic.

You can’t point to current publisher behavior on EGS, because their behavior at present is influenced by Valve’s price policy (called the “Platform Most Favored Nation” or “PMFN” clause in the court filing) which is the foundation of the anti-competitive case against Valve.

Looking at your other comment, I can say that Ubisoft tried ditching steam, but their prices didn’t really change even though they were paying a lower commission to epic than they would have to valve. So they would have had the ability change their prices to whatever they wanted on the epic store without fear of valve vetoing the price, because those games weren’t being sold on steam.

Steam clearly wins on features, the only metric to beat them on is price. Epic is trying to do so, but publishers are not actually lowering the cost on their platform because of Valve’s policies—policies which are only effective because a publisher cannot afford to be delisted from Steam due its large market share.

Is there any actual proof of this? Epic is well known for giving games away for free, the best price customers can hope for. Yet they still can’t seem to retain a loyal customer base. Maybe the price isn’t the most important factor for a digital distribution platform.

Spedwell , (edited )

So if you want to sell steam keys…

Yeah, to be honest that portion of the Wolfire case is pretty weak in my opinion. The Wolfire case isn’t only about steam keys, though, it also alleges that the PMFN clause applies to all game listings outside of Steam.

I’m not even close to being a lawyer so I don’t know why exactly, but this video seems to make a pretty good argument for why this isn’t a good legal argument.

I watch the timestamp provided. The video appears to me to suggest that it is a well-founded legal complaint given you can establish the MFN is the cause of the lack of differentiated pricing. The commentator seems to dismiss the idea that such an effect is evident in the information provided, and seems wishy-washy on a lot of his claims about economic principles. I’ll take his word on the legal front, but for the economic side I will turn to the plethora of academic and legal publications on the effects of MFN clauses (which support the anti-competitive effects alleged by the filing).

Also it looks like the Colvin wasn’t dismissed, it was consolidated into the .

There’s also no telling whether or not other storefronts have similar conditions in place, because apparently these kind of Most Favored Nation clauses are fairly standard in some industries.

Yep, and the MFN is also a point in the monopoly proceedings against Amazon.

Looking at your other comment, I can say that Ubisoft tried ditching steam, but their prices didn’t really change even though they were paying a lower commission to epic than they would have to valve. So they would have had the ability change their prices to whatever they wanted on the epic store without fear of valve vetoing the price, because those games weren’t being sold on steam.

This is interesting, I was unaware. I’ll have to look into it.

Not to be nitpicky (because this might be solid counter-evidence), but do we know that in a universe without the Steam MFN policy Ubisoft wouldn’t have listed the games concurrently on Steam for 18% higher?

Is there any actual proof of this? Epic is well known for giving games away for free, the best price customers can hope for. Yet they still can’t seem to retain a loyal customer base. Maybe the price isn’t the most important factor for a digital distribution platform.

Strikes me as a little beside the point. A randomly rolled free game once a week is almost nothing compared to the sea of purchases in the game industry. If I want to buy game XYZ, the free weekly does me no good—at most, it gets me to install Epic (which is what they want). But it isn’t going to change the fact that Steam gives more bang for the buck, all else equal.

The fact remains, that Steam is preventing games from being listed for less on Epic. So if price isn’t the most important factor, why does Steam feel the need to impose such a policy?

ltxrtquq , (edited )

Not to be nitpicky (because this might be solid counter-evidence), but do we know that in a universe without the Steam MFN policy Ubisoft wouldn’t have listed the games concurrently on Steam for 18% higher?

We can go back and look at the historical prices for The Division 2 and see that Ubisoft didn’t have a lower baseline price on their own store compared to the epic store. So either Epic has an MFN policy as well, or Ubisoft would most likely want to keep their prices consistent across platforms and stores.

Strikes me as a little beside the point. A randomly rolled free game once a week isn’t going to change anyone’s purchasing habits or change the landscape of the marketplace. If I want to buy game XYZ, the free weekly does me no good—at most, it gets me to install Epic (which is what they want). But it isn’t going to change the fact that Steam gives more bang for the buck, all else equal.

That’s the thing: you’re being given a random game every week and that’s still not enough to get people to stick around. The games they’re giving away are often pretty good too, and yet it’s not enough to convince people that the Epic Games Store is worth using. And looking at the store now, it seems they’re just giving back 5% of the money you spend, meaning if you opt into their ecosystem, all their games actually are cheaper. At some point you need to admit that people won’t abandon steam just because prices are lower somewhere else. Because the alternative would mean that piracy would be everyone’s preferred method of getting games.

The fact remains, that Steam is preventing games from being listed for less on Epic. So if price isn’t the most important factor, why does Steam feel the need to impose such a policy?

We also don’t really know that they do. The source saying that the MFN policy exists at all is the CEO of Epic Games saying so on twitter. And I’m pretty sure the lawsuit says that it’s “selectively enforced”, so there aren’t any actual examples of Valve vetoing a game’s price based on the price in another store.

Spedwell ,

We can go back and look at the historical prices for The Division 2 and see that Ubisoft didn’t have a lower baseline price on their own store compared to the epic store. So either Epic has an MFN policy as well, or Ubisoft would most likely want to keep their prices consistent across platforms and stores.

Thanks for digging that up, interesting to note. Epic might have an MFN, or maybe Ubisoft’s internal publishing overhead is roughly 12%.

That’s the thing: you’re being given a random game every week and that’s still not enough to get people to stick around

I don’t know what you envision when you say “stick around”. Do people uninstall Steam when they install Epic? No, they don’t. You just have both installed. The free game gimmic is for you to download the platform; that’s the first hurdle, but it does little to change your preference between platforms when it comes time to make a purchase.

And looking at the store now, it seems they’re just giving back 5% of the money you spend, meaning if you opt into their ecosystem, all their games actually are cheaper.

Interesting point on the 5%, I was unaware of that.

We also don’t really know that they do. The source saying that the MFN policy exists at all is the CEO of Epic Games saying so on twitter. And I’m pretty sure the lawsuit says that it’s “selectively enforced”, so there aren’t any actual examples of Valve vetoing a game’s price based on the price in another store.

What evidence would be needed to convince you?

Clearly, there is a business case for listing a game for less on Epic (or a publisher’s own site!). We can trust the MFN policy most likely exists. What other explanation for the observed behavior can be put forth?

“Selectively enforced” is the wording used by Valve’s own employee. That could mean anything from “only big, noteable games” to “only enforced when we noticed it” to “actually enforced consistently”. Regardless, it can have a chilling effect that causes everyone to step in line.

ltxrtquq ,

I don’t know what you envision when you say “stick around”.

I would expect people to start buying games from the epic games store. They’d be using it regularly and have a sense of ownership over the games they have in their libraries.

What evidence would be needed to convince you?

Honestly, I’m mostly just being pedantic. I’m perfectly willing to believe this kind of clause exists, but I want to acknowledge that at least for now there’s no actual evidence of it.

What other explanation for the observed behavior can be put forth?

For games being the same price on different store fronts? Whatever the justification for selling digital games at the same price as physical games was back when digital purchases were becoming mainstream, or for the same reason that Nintendo games will rarely go on sale: because there are still people willing to pay.

“Selectively enforced” is the wording used by Valve’s own employee.

Is it? Because I pulled the term from the complaint filed Apr 27, 2021 under the Price Veto Provision section. Where did you see a valve employee saying it?

Spedwell ,

… but I want to acknowledge that at least for now there’s no actual evidence of it.

I wouldn’t call a multi-year class action asserting that a clause exists “no evidence”.

(I mostly continue on this point because I will continue to go around saying Valve uses a PMFN clause, and it’s not unfounded for me to do so)

What other explanation for the observed behavior can be put forth?

For games being the same price on different store fronts? Whatever the justification for selling digital games at the same price as physical games was back when digital purchases were becoming mainstream, or for the same reason that Nintendo games will rarely go on sale: because there are still people willing to pay.

Alright, if you’re not convinced that there ought to naturally be differentiated pricing, and that the uniform pricing we see is artificial, I don’t know where else to go.

Is it? Because I pulled the term from the complaint filed Apr 27, 2021 under the Price Veto Provision section. Where did you see a valve employee saying it?

Ah, I was thinking of the “TomG” quotes here. I see what you’re referencing now, though that doesn’t really make the language as less ambiguous.

Anyway, I enjoyed the discussion but I’m going to call it here. Cheers.

ltxrtquq ,

Alright, if you’re not convinced that there ought to naturally be differentiated pricing, and that the uniform pricing we see is artificial, I don’t know where else to go.

I think my point was more that publishers aren’t going to do that. Back when digital wasn’t the default, it was acknowledged that selling a download was a fair bit cheaper and easier than manufacturing disks or carts that could easily be resold by the customer after they were done with it, but the pricing didn’t change to reflect that. This kind of thing has been going on for a long time, and not just with steam.

Anyway, I enjoyed the discussion but I’m going to call it here.

Fair enough, good night.

hedgehog ,

The fact remains, that Steam is preventing games from being listed for less on Epic.

For that fact to “remain,” it would need to have been established in the first place. At best it’s been alleged.

Fubarberry ,
@Fubarberry@sopuli.xyz avatar

Other people are making good counter arguments, so I’m just going to address one bit:

You can also look at how despite charging a 12% platform fee, Epic Games Store does not sell games 18% cheaper.

Epic hasn’t been running their game store for very long, and they’ve been operating it at a loss to secure market share. They lose hundreds of millions of dollars a year on their store. This is mostly due to them buying exclusive rights to games, but my point is that the EGS is not a successful, self sustaining business. Epic taking a 12% cut doesn’t mean that 12% is enough money, because their whole business model is about losing money to attract users.

You also have to remember that the storefront cut is an upfront cost with an unclear long-term cost. Valve is promising to always host the game and cover the bandwidth for every future download and update, no matter how many updates or how many times someone downloads it. Not to mention that they also will host mods, provide matchmaking, video streaming, and many other benefits.

Spedwell ,

It’s also not about whether 30% is the right number or not. It’s about how Valve has made it impossible to choose a different number at all.

The argument has little to nothing to do with Epic’s business strategy—it’s 12%, along with the 30% of Steam, is merely a feature of the landscape in which publishers operate. Whether 12% is sustainable for the platform long-term or not, Valve is coercing the market so that publishers cannot take advantage of it.

Makeitstop ,

Steam isn’t a monopoly, I can get my games elsewhere (epic, gog, humble store, origin etc). But Steam is dominating the market because it does it better. It offers value and features that others don’t, and it generally hasn’t abused its dominant market position to squeeze the consumer or crush their competitors. The closest thing to enshittification we’ve seen from Steam was them allowing third party DRM and launchers, which isn’t something they wanted, it’s them backing down from a stand-off.

I want competition, but there’s good competition and bad competition. Good competition is what we see from Steam and gog, where they stand out by being good at what they do and giving customers what they want.

For an example of bad competition, just look at streaming sites. We went from everything being on Netflix to everything being divided among dozens of shitty platforms, each of which costs more, and the prices keep going up, especially if you don’t want ads. Nothing was improved for the consumer when Netflix lost its defacto monopoly. Which isn’t to say that Netflix is great, only that the competition for marketshare has only made things worse for the consumer.

I think it’s easy to look at all the bullshit EA and Ubisoft and the like pull now, and imagine that same pattern from streaming playing out in gaming.

Spedwell ,

See my other comment

daltotron ,

For an example of bad competition, just look at streaming sites. We went from everything being on Netflix to everything being divided among dozens of shitty platforms, each of which costs more, and the prices keep going up, especially if you don’t want ads. Nothing was improved for the consumer when Netflix lost its defacto monopoly. Which isn’t to say that Netflix is great, only that the competition for marketshare has only made things worse for the consumer.

Not to sound like a ancap idiot or whatever, but I’d imagine that has to do with the fact that streaming services don’t actually compete with one another. Exclusivity deals mean they don’t actually compete in terms of user experience, features, ease of use, higher video or audio quality than their competition, improved bitrate, whatever. Instead, they just compete based on who can snap up what IPs for the cheapest, which is just a game of whoever has the most money, whoever can outbid their competitors. Then, you’re not going to netflix or hulu or disney+ because of the features of the platform, you’re going to them because they have some IP that the other platforms just straight up don’t, and if you want to watch both IPs you gotta pay for both. So, it’s not really competition, in the conventional sense.

AeonFelis ,

I think the whole “monopoly bad” notion is a bit off. You start opposing monopolies, but then people realized that duopolies are also bad, and next thing you know we talk about triopolies and centiopolies and whatnot.

So I think the actual number is not the thing that matters, and instead the thing we should be worrying about is cartels.

The defining feature of a cartel is the ruthless action it takes to kill competition. The monopolies everyone are so mad about are cartels of single companies, but the bad thing about them is their cartellic behavior - not the fact they are along in the market.

Steam is not a cartel.

Spedwell ,

See my other comment in this thread. Steam does exhibit what you call “cartellic behavior”.

AeonFelis ,

Attack from that angle then, not from something that strongly correlates with it.

Spedwell ,

I’m confused what you mean.

AeonFelis ,

Sorry. Terrible wording on my part.

My argument is that instead of attacking Valve for being big, you should attack them for doing bad things. Your “other comment in this thread” (I assume lemmy.world/comment/10668748 ?) describes an aggressive practice done by Valve. Why not lead with that? The problem is not the size of these companies per se, but the way they’ve reached that size and the way they weaponize it against competitors. Focusing on attacking the size and the monopoly status of the companies is just saying “it’s not okay to be successful”.

NikkiDimes ,

That’s like being okay with a dictator because they’re a benevolent dictator. Even if things are good in that moment, you’re bound for enshittification when that person is no longer in power, a la the fears of the OP.

calcopiritus ,

More like a democracy with no term limits and a leader with 90+% popularity rate.

Sure, steam looks powerful, as if they can do whatever they want. But you have to look at why steam is so powerful, it’s because people like steam. If steam uses that power for anticompetitive behavior, people will stop liking steam and it will lose a lot of power.

Just like if the leader does something that the people don’t like, suddenly the approval rating is no longer at 90+% and he loses the next election.

sanpedropeddler ,

Oh so its ok because they haven’t exercised their power in a way you don’t like yet. Makes perfect sense.

AeonFelis ,

Yes. The subtle distinction between having physically fit legs capable of kicking babies and actually kicking babies.

sanpedropeddler ,

This would be a good metaphor if there was a massive financial incentive to kick babies.

AeonFelis ,

Maybe not financial, but intrusive thoughts are a thing…

ulterno ,
@ulterno@lemmy.kde.social avatar

A nice word choice.
I’m going to use it this way next time.

sep ,

Everybody would love 2 or 3 more good healthy alternative to even the playing field. Because having the future of fun hang by the tread of a single not-corrupt-to-the-core company is fucking stressfull. But dunking on valve is not the way to a healthy gaming marketplace.

Spedwell ,

I will continue dunking on Valve as long as they remain the reason good, healthy alternatives can’t exist. I will not re-hash the whole arguments here, please see my other replies in this thread.

sep ,

I have read your arguments, I just fundamentaly disagree. I do not want to lower the ceiling until valve is as crappy as the rest. I want the floor to rise. Basically valve do not stop other companies from competing. Nothing is stopping EGS from including and contributing to proton. allowing and even helping developers to have their games on multiple marketplaces. Building awesome services to provide to developers.

Spedwell ,

Basically valve do not stop other companies from competing

So is there something you didn’t understand that I can clarify, or are we in agreement that Valve needs to discard the PMFN policy?

sep ,

Is it a shitty businiss practice? Absolutly. Should valve as the only company allow others to under cut them? No that would be insane. Should it be regulated as illegal businiss practices for everyone - yes absolutly.

Spedwell ,

Okay, fair enough.

sep ,

It is basically contractual price fixing. Staggering that the practice is allowed.

calcopiritus ,

Tbf monopolies are sometimes unavoidable. Like the water company or the energy company (at least the ones that actually own the cables). Usually natural monopolies are nationalized though.

Even if steam is not a natural Monopoly, competition is possible, we allow it to be a monopoly because we like it, not the other way around. There are plenty of digital stores, you can at any time buy almost any game from an alternative, I’m not aware of steam having any exclusivity agreement with any game (except the ones that valve made).

Valve also doesn’t use shopping platform monopoly methods such as artificially making process low by selling at a loss, which is the main problem with other monopolies like Amazon.

It also doesn’t bundle 100 unnecessary services to the subscription. It doesn’t even have a subscription.

Sure, you can’t move your steam games to another platform, but you can get new ones. It’s not much of a problem having games from different platforms anyway, GoG for example even let’s you launch steam games from the GoG launcher. And you can always go back to good old shortcuts on a folder.

The moment steam starts enshittifing, it will be very easy to switch to another platform. Compared with other platforms, like any social media or YouTube.

Spedwell , (edited )

Valve also doesn’t use shopping platform monopoly methods such as artificially making process low by selling at a loss, which is the main problem with other monopolies like Amazon.

That isn’t the only method. There is also the “[Platform] Most Favored Nation” clause, which eliminates the ability to undercut the platform elsewhere. This allows the platform to leverage it’s market share and benefits to maintain dominance, raising the price floor of the market so nobody can compete on cost. Being the dominant platform, with better economies of scale and consumer intertia, this gives them an advantage in that competing platforms have a difficult time being the better choice.

Valve uses a PMFN clause. See my other comments for links to relevant court cases.

The moment steam starts enshittifing, it will be very easy to switch to another platform. Compared with other platforms, like any social media or YouTube.

Being familiar with “enshitify”, you should go read more of Cory Doctorow’s (who coined the term) writing over on pluralistic.net. He writes frequently about monopolies (his writing on Amazon’s monopolistic practices (skip to the part about high fees and raising prices) are applicable to Valve’s PMFN clause). He also has explicitly given social media platforms as examples of platforms prone to enshitification because of the high network effects.

drunkpostdisaster ,

It’s not their fault epic sucks

mindbleach ,

Dehumanizing people who recognize the power of overwhelming market share is a lot worse than pointing out the power of overwhelming market share.

Folks will shit on Alan Wake II for only releasing on EGS, like that’s obviously the only reason it’s not selling well… and then refuse to consider the implications of that claim. I have led people by the nose through what it means when there’s only one store that really matters, and developers are generally screwed if they can’t or won’t sell through that one store.

un_aristocrate ,

Whenever you are afraid of the negative impact on your life of a corporation’s possible failure, it means that you have become reliant on someone you can’t trust. You must act accordingly.

interdimensionalmeme ,

Reject modernity, move to the woods, return to monke.

Swallowtail ,

Probably not a popular view here but I’ve found my hobbies more fulfilling since I started doing stuff other than gaming. Native plant/food gardening, reading books, working out… all of this stuff can be affected by capitalism too of course but I’m less beholden to it. I still game a bit now and then but much less than I used to.

interdimensionalmeme , (edited )

Even when steam is gone, we’ll still have movies, books and music.

Because of the analogue hole we can capture these and store these as long as unlicensed hard drive possession is allowed.

Of course there are non-culture based activities but I think we shouldn’t tolerate regression from big tech and take steps to prevent them just out of shear principle.

These facilitator middlemen think they can dictate how to live our lives and I think we should make them regret this position severely.

Moorshou ,

Does this mean I should buy games from GOG? Or support physical media/indies?

blind3rdeye ,

Yes. GOG. itch.io. Direct from some other website. That’s right.

Steam is very good; but the hidden cost is that you depend on them maintaining their service. If they turn evil, you’re screwed. You either have to bend to their will, or you lose your library of games.

On the other hand, GOG and itch.io are arguably not as good as Steam right now, but they don’t have any kind of lock-in. So if they start to backslide, you can still walk away with your full library of games. I do think it’s a good idea to ‘not put all your eggs in one basket.’

teawrecks , (edited )

I think this post massively overestimates the power a CEO has. The CEO is beholden to the shareholders. Valve is private, so and its shareholders are its workers. It would be useful to know how many shares Gaben has of valve, but I still don’t think the next CEO would suddenly also be the majority owner.

Also, I know things have changed a lot in the last 12 years, but 12 years ago regarding the total dissolution of Valve, Gaben said:

“It’s way more likely we would head in that direction than say, ‘Let’s find some giant company that wants to cash us out and wait two or three years to have our employment agreements terminate."

Also, forcing users onto windows is THE way to kill valve’s profits. The whole point of the Linux push was a direct response to the windows store, and msft’s threat of forcing valve to give them a cut of purchase through steam. Msft will still do that the first chance it gets. So even the most profit-minded new leader wouldn’t make that choice, as it’s plainly shortsighted.

ZILtoid1991 ,

Also Valve isn’t the charity they believe it is. It’s a de-facto monopoly, and it has serious moderation issues (basically if you bought enough games, they will less likely ban you for hatespeech and such).

Rossel ,

Valve isn’t pulling any anticompetitive moves though. They just try to secure profits by being the best instead of destroying everyone else that dares to compete with them.

sep ,

Beeing not assholes against their own users are basically anticompetitive these days. ;)

FreeFacts ,

Valve isn’t pulling any anticompetitive moves though.

Well, they are allegedly forcing price parity on publishers, so they can’t sell cheaper on their own website or some other storefront that takes smaller cuts. That’s anticompetitive as shit, and they are being sued over it.

Rossel ,

That parity thing was debunked 2 years ago when a similar lawsuit against Valve was dismissed, their parity thing is for resold Steam keys, which Valve issues with no profit margin. Milberg London are trolls that tried to do the same lawsuit against Sony and PlayStation last year. Also got nowhere.

Daxtron2 ,

They’re not a defacto monopoly? There’s many different ways to buy games online and valve does not have anti-consumer practices like exclusivity deals. I have not heard anything about them not banning for hate speech? Every time I’ve ever reported something its been taken down within 48hrs

DragonTypeWyvern ,

“Valve is private, so its shareholders are its workers.”

I don’t know who keeps telling you libs this, but they’re lying.

FlexibleToast ,

I don’t think that misunderstanding is limited to the libs.

DragonTypeWyvern ,

Sorry, I forgot about the useful idiot breed of fascist, compared to the “lies as a strategy” breed.

teawrecks ,

Oh whoops, I thought you were trying to be taken seriously. My bad.

FlexibleToast ,

They were so close…

DragonTypeWyvern ,

Your boos mean nothing, you don’t even know what a lib is either.

interdimensionalmeme ,

It is because of a limited understanding of companies in the startup phase. At some point, there is enough cash flow to buy labour outright rather than giving up capital on each hire. This allows shareholders to captute all future capital created by future wagies.

teawrecks ,

Sorry, the way i phrased that does sound causal. It should say “and”.

Any real lib knows, public or private, there’s no way out of our capitalist downfall.

TopRamenBinLaden ,

You are most definitely right that the major shareholders aren’t the workers. The major shareholders are Gabe Newell, and some bankers in Japan.

Still, it is known that Valve employees are partially compensated with stock for working in the company, so most of the employees are still shareholders. They just aren’t the major ones.

DragonTypeWyvern ,

Sure, but that’s not what makes it a private company.

TopRamenBinLaden ,

Ahh I get your point now, sorry I missed it. Yea, if people think that private company = employee shareholders, they are very wrong.

Sianna , (edited )

Employees are stakeholder, not necessarily shareholder. Management, likely. The grunts, I think not so much.

teawrecks ,

How are you differentiating stakeholder and shareholder? The employees are certainly shareholders.

Valve doesn’t really hire “grunts”. The people who are actually considered employees of valve are very few and highly skilled. The number of Wikipedia from 2016 is very out of date and estimates 360. But valve’s LinkedIn still says “over 300”.

ben_dover ,

there are common definitions for both terms. the employees aren’t shareholders as long as they don’t own a part of the company, but they are stakeholders since they have something to do with the company. their partners, publishers, etc. are stakeholders too

teawrecks ,

Yes, I was making sure that was the distinction you were making, because I’m trying to disambiguate for you: the employees of valve are both shareholders and stakeholders.

BaldManGoomba ,

Shareholders is the owners and since they are private we don’t know who they are. Right now it could be all Gaben or it could be a mix but Gaben is majority resulting in the culture is what he wants. Private companies don’t have to be maximizing profits focused but will die if they don’t make money. When people die it is whoever inherits or has majority share that pushes what happens.

teawrecks ,

I had briefly searched to see if it was known how much ownership Gaben had. Did you find it somewhere, or are you just assuming he’s majority?

I do know the employees are compensated in shares of the company, but you’re right that I don’t know what proportion is owned by employees.

BaldManGoomba ,

Below is what I can find it isn’t well sourced but ownership isn’t the same as shares. You can have profits shares without having any ownership stake.

Valve Corporation, the American video game developer and digital distributor company, is a private company with a secretive ownership structure. Gabe Newell, the company’s co-founder and CEO, is the majority shareholder, and his ownership stake is estimated to be over 50%. Other investors include Valve executives and employees, as well as major shareholders such as The Custody Bank of Japan, Ltd. and Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation. Wikipedia Valve Corporation - Wikipedia Founders. Gabe Newell. Mike Harrington. Headquarters. Bellevue, Washington. , US. Key people. Gabe Newell (president) Scott Lynch (COO) Products. show. Video games. show. Hardware. show. Software. Total equity. US$10 billion (2019) Owner. Gabe Newell (>50%) Number of employees. ~360 (2016) Subsidiaries. Valve S.a.r.l. Valve GmbH. Campo Santo. ASN. 32590. Website. valvesoftware.com. Valve was founded in 1996 by the former Microsoft employees Gabe Newell and Mike Harrington. Their debut game, the first-person shooter (FPS) Half-Life (1998), was a critical and commercial success and had a lasting influence on the FPS genre. Harrington left in 2000. namria.gov.ph Which company owns Valve May 28, 2024 — Valve is a private company with a secretive ownership structure. Its investors include cofounder Gabe Newell and Valve executives and employees… In 2003, Valve moved to Bellevue, Washington, and reincorporated as Valve Corporation. namria.gov.ph How much of valve does Gabe own - NAMRIA May 24, 2024 — Valve is owned (mostly) owned by it’s CEO, Gabe Newell, one of the founders of the company. The only real connection with Tencent is their . Newell’s ownership stake isn’t disclosed and he’s attributed 50.1% of Valve in this analysis to reflect his control of the company and status as co-founder… NAMRIA Who is the majority shareholder of Valve - NAMRIA May 25, 2024 — Gabe Newell has led Valve Corp., which develops video games, since he cofounded it in 1998 with former Microsoft colleague Mike Harrington… Over the years, the ownership of Valve Corporation and Steam has remained primarily with the founders and major investors. Gabe Newell . Major Shareholders (Top 10) ; The Custody Bank of Japan, Ltd. 2,596, 2.88 ; Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation, 2,553, 2.83 ; KITZ Corporation Employee Stock .” Valve ostentatiously makes little use of direct authority. majority shareholder, Gabe Newell) is used At the same time, contextual .

Valve Corporation is an American video game developer and digital distributor company in Bellevue, Washington. It was started in 1996 by Gabe Newell and Mike Harrington, two Microsoft employees in the past. steam.fandom.com Gabe Newell | SteamWiki | Fandom Gabe Newell, known online as Gaben, is the co-founder and majority shareholder of Valve Corporation. He attended Harvard University, but dropped out and worked at Microsoft until 1996, where he and co-worker Mike Harrington left to found Valve. Newell and former Microsoft colleague Mike Harrington founded Valve in 1996. Their first game, Half-Life, was released in 1998 and was a critical and commercial success. Harrington left the company in 2000, and Valve moved to Bellevue, Washington and reincorporated as Valve Corporation in 2003.

teawrecks ,

Highly recommend putting that in a quote and giving a source rather than copy pasting a wall in plain text. For all I know you just asked ChatGPT and this is what it spat out.

And in this context, just the part about Gabe being majority shareholder would have sufficed.

rwhitisissle ,

This is not “a prediction” - this is inevitably what’s going to happen.

Everyone here who has drank the Valve kool-aid and pretends like they can do no wrong is dangerously short-sighted. Steam’s virtual monopoly on PC gaming is a huge issue. You think Epic has a monopoly on the concept of “Store Exclusives?” Fucking spare me. It’s a matter of time before Steam locks in its own exclusives, kills Proton, and locks every. single. game. behind always online DRM.

If you want to distribute your new PC game, guess what? You don’t get to contract with both GOG and Steam. You don’t get to say your game is Linux compatible because it runs well in the Proton compatibility layer. Oh, and if you say “games could run on Linux before Proton!” then you’re deluding yourself by remembering a time when games were distributed with their own launcher and weren’t packed to the gills with platform specific code so that the game integrates seamlessly with a specific third-party launcher and its DRM tools. You bought a Steamdeck? Cool. The version of Arch it runs is no longer supported. You have to upgrade to “Windows for Steameck.” Yes, you have to pay for a fucking Windows license. Yes, it has fewer features than baseline Windows. No, it’s not less expensive.

You think what’s happening to YouTube is bad? Fucking strap in, boys. Welcome to digital content distribution in the age of unfettered capitalism. I wonder how many of you are gonna eat this shit up, huff lethal quantities of copium, and say it’s “not that bad” once it starts happening and you’re faced with either standing by your own stated convictions and giving up almost all PC gaming in general or bend the knee so you can get your precious Steam Library back. Probably most of you.

Ninmi ,
@Ninmi@sopuli.xyz avatar

What you’re saying is “inevitable” hasn’t happened for the entire 20+ years of Steam. I’m going to guess Valve is going to continue being a private company and doing whatever the fuck they want, without investor pressure towards enshittification.

Steam’s monopoly is actually what’s holding PC gaming together. Other types of digital distribution services are so fucked up by exclusivity deals that any “competition” is always going to mean “megacorporation uses existing wealth to deny competition”.

Epic is trying really hard to bring the exclusivity nightmare over to PC gaming as well, but so far Valve still holds.

rwhitisissle ,

What you’re saying is “inevitable” hasn’t happened for the entire 20+ years of Steam.

Something being “inevitable” by definition means it will eventually happen, but has not already occurred.

Steam’s monopoly is actually what’s holding PC gaming together.

“Steam good. Steam has monopoly. Therefore, monopoly good.”

Woof.

Bread ,

I would argue that they are financially motivated to keep proton and Linux gaming going and not just out of the kindness of their hearts. They are competing with Microsoft and their store. When your competition has complete control of the OS you need to run your store on, you are at the total mercy of them. They can’t afford not to keep on their current track. Especially now that they are successfully doing it, going back would be a death sentence.

Prunebutt ,

Considering how much money they make with gambling, I think Valve is not as saint-like as people think it is.

People make Games has done two great videos on Valve

wonderfulvoltaire ,
@wonderfulvoltaire@lemmy.world avatar

They’re getting sued often because they’re greedy sloths suffering the ego trip just like epic did when Fortnite was on the top of the world second only to Minecraft of course.

slumlordthanatos ,

They’re far from perfect, I’d be the first person to tell you.

But they’re still light-years ahead of anyone else, because they’re perfectly happy just making tons of money instead of trying to squeeze every last cent out of the storefront at our expense.

prunerye ,

This is silly. Valve is already a profit driven company. You don’t see the walled garden? The DRM? Valve supports proton because it’s in their monetary interest to do so.

brb ,

How is it walled garden when you can add any non-steam game to your library?

MSugarhill , (edited )
@MSugarhill@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

I have seriously no idea, but can you take them out easily? If not, it’s a walled garden.

prunerye ,

You’re thinking in reverse. Walled gardens keep you in, not out. Without logging into your Steam account (pretending you don’t have one), try to download a mod for a game you bought on GOG and see how it goes for you.

SuddenDownpour ,

There’s “profit-driven” and “seeking exclusively the profits of the next quarter”. While capitalism has a lot of downsides in the long run, the vast majority of bullshit people get outraged about is due to publicly traded companies being organized in such a way that their CEOs and shareholders sacrifice all sustainability and instead try to loot your kitchen.

Whatever Steam policies you think are bullshit right now (and I can name a couple more, too), they’re not too much in comparison to what they’d be under more typical management.

BuckenBerry , (edited )
@BuckenBerry@lemmy.world avatar

Since it’s not publicly owned it doesn’t have to focus on quarterly profits.

If it gets sold to Microsoft they’re probably going to start stripping it down to please investors and get rid banking on how most people will be too lazy to leave it. We’ve seen the same thing happen with reddit and twitter. I’m pretty sure enshittification is inevitable.

pivot_root ,

Capitalism bad. Support Epic Games instead. /s

Honytawk ,

Many won’t like it, but this is the reason we need competition like Epic games and GOG.

The steam fanboys certainly aren’t going to make this problem any better.

FartsWithAnAccent ,
@FartsWithAnAccent@fedia.io avatar

I like Steam and I think GOG is great too

Jarix ,

Humble bundle also has a store now fwiw

FartsWithAnAccent ,
@FartsWithAnAccent@fedia.io avatar

Cool, I used to buy from them all the time!

Heavybell ,
@Heavybell@lemmy.world avatar

We need competition like GOG. EGS is shit, we need competition better than EGS.

Honytawk ,

Bad competition is still better than no competition, because of the aforementioned issue.

kungen ,

Yeah, but fair competition? EGS paying publishers to have exclusives doesn’t seem like fair competition to me.

sep ,

For sure! There is no real market with exclusives! EGS is the bad apple that may spoil the bunch. Now do steam services also create a pseudo exclusive, yes kinda. But developers do not have to use those, they are just making their life easier. And developers can still do their games on other platforms as well.

Spedwell ,

EGS can’t compete on features for sure (it really is quite a shit platform), but they would be very competitive if their 12% fee (vs. Steams 30% fee) could be passed to buyers as lower prices. As it stands, Valve’s policies essentially strongarms the market to prohibit this (publishers selling on Steam may not have a lower price on a different platform, or the game can be de-listed from Steam). The Wolfire v. Valve case is highly relevent here.

My plea is for you not to get mad at Epic for being shit. We should be accepting of crappy platforms if their fees reflect that (Epic charges 40% what Steam does). Focus your frustration at Valve for preventing the market from fairly allowing you select the quality of the platform you’d like to pay for.

drunkpostdisaster ,

Yeah, how dare we compare steam to poor little epic?

Heavybell ,
@Heavybell@lemmy.world avatar

I’d be a lot more willing to root for epic if they had spent any time at all making EGS preferable. I would prefer steam over their mess even if EGS was 20% cheaper all the time. Tho I go for GOG over either of them whenever possible.

bouh ,

Competition like gog, I’m all for it. But what is epic providing? I fail to see it.

trevor ,

Their own host of anti-competitive practices.

ipkpjersi ,

Gabe is helping, sure, but he isn’t holding up gaming. People were gaming on Linux before Proton even existed, myself included. Also, even if Valve went away completely, Proton is open-source and there are people like GloriousEggroll who work on Proton entirely as a community member. Proton will live on, specifically because it is open-source. All the progress made on Proton won’t suddenly disappear, all the games that were previously playable on Proton will still be playable on Proton.

It’s a somewhat reasonable fear but it’s not a realistic fear. Proton isn’t going anywhere.

RandomLegend ,
@RandomLegend@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

Additionally, if Steam would start to morph into what is posted here, it would simply be integrated into Heroic and / or lutris just as Epic is right now. There would be no need to actually launch steam anymore but just use it as a background service to pipe your games into something else.

grue ,

Proton will live on, specifically because it is open-source.

Don’t just thank open source; thank copyleft for the fact that Valve couldn’t make a closed-source fork of it even if it wanted to.

kuberoot ,

Even if they want to open-source it, an issue is the amount of work of organizing the repository, making sure it’s properly organized and doesn’t have any files they don’t want to distribute, and then maintaining that with future versions.

grue ,

What? Proton (i.e., WINE) has been LGPL Free Software since before Valve even touched it.

kuberoot ,

Sorry, what I mean is, if Valve wasn’t forced to keep it opensource, I think a big factor against would be the extra work

thawed_caveman ,

The life expectancy of 75 is an average (of the US population i assume), billionaires are likely to live longer

theonyltruemupf ,

75 years of nation-wide life expectancy is also likely to include early deaths due to accidents, cancer and such. People who die of “old age” typically do later than 75.

driving_crooner ,
@driving_crooner@lemmy.eco.br avatar

When people talks about life expectancy 99.99% of the time they mean life expectancy at birth, at every year the life expectancy change. Using this life table someone with 61 years, have a life expectancy of 19.7 years, that means he’s expected to live until he’s 80.

grue ,

Yep, and that was true even going all the way back through history. People weren’t routinely dying in their 30s or whatever before modern medicine; it’s just that a lot more of them were dying in infancy/early childhood and that brought down the average. (That’s the situation anti-vaxxers are trying to go back to, BTW.)

etchinghillside ,

I would say it’s appropriate to loop cancer deaths into the “old age” bucket – DNA getting old and making mistakes replicating seems relevant.

xantoxis ,

Fit billionaires do. What happens to gaben’s heart and arteries are anyone’s guess. He is getting healthier but you can’t undo damage completely.

Rolder ,

Plus Gaben has been doing some serious work on his health recently so the fat part no longer applies.

474D ,

Gaben is not exactly an inspiring portrait of health…

TopRamenBinLaden ,

The latest pictures of him look good, though. The man has definitely lost some weight.

https://sh.itjust.works/pictrs/image/c1f48695-91bd-447d-a5d2-1a3d6936f78e.jpeg

HobbitFoot ,

It is funny that people think Valve would sell out instead of becoming the big evil.

As Valve continues developing an OS agnostic platform, they start building into various tools that require a Steam account to play games in order to defend their app store. Maybe they buy Unity and make it a Steam exclusive, maybe they make their own engine that can be played on Windows or Linux.

Integrate Chromecast technology to make a console like multimedia device to compete against XBox and PlayStation. Then, start selling video and integrating streaming access.

Push the Steam Store to become bigger. Sure, you aren’t forced to use the Steam Store on most Valve developed hardware, but it is default.

Then, like Google did with Android, pull the tech stack from the open source tools to become wholely integrated with Steam Services.

zaphodb2002 ,

Most of this already exists and they haven’t taken that tack, though. SteamOS is just Arch and KDE, with access to anything Arch has access to. If you don’t like that, Valve made it trivial to put another OS on the Deck, like Bazzite.

Steam Play is already a streaming technology, which works great and is free to use and has been for like at least a decade.

Steam Store is already gigantic, despite having some well funded competition who has to resort to exclusives and free game giveaways to entice users. It’s already the de facto default game store for PC, and provides lots of extra features beyond just game delivery.

Most of the technology Steam uses (like Proton or GameScope or Arch) are open-source. We can (and do) fork their work for our own purposes regularly.

I don’t think Valve is perfect, but I do think they value their open approach to technology. I think as long as the company is never publicly traded, I would imagine anyone who currently works at Valve would share that attitude with GabeN, otherwise I imagine they wouldn’t work there long.

If they go public and have to report to shareholders, then I completely agree that the enshittification will be swift and merciless. I hope Gabe makes Valve an employee-owned co-op or something when he decides to retire. I can only imagine he has strong plans for the transition of power.

HobbitFoot ,

I’m commenting more on how Valve could become evil while maintaining and expanding its markets. Part of that is using open source as a way to reduce development costs while still controlling and monetizing key parts of the tech stack.

daltotron ,

You know, as long as their management structure stays relatively similar to what it is, I think I’d be more fine with them being the big evil, compared to basically anyone else.

Edit: and also as long as they stay a private company, that would also be a big concern, but I guess that’s maybe the same as saying their management structure stays the same

GBU_28 ,

I already have enough games to last a lifetime, stored to my storage

soloner ,

Yeah hate to say it but by the time this golden age ends with valve I’ll prob either not be gaming as much anyway or to your point have enough that I won’t really care about the newer games.

GBU_28 ,

I mean, I’m not even bummed! Life has gotten very busy, but I have about 10 old standbys in multiple genres. When time allows, I can get tons of enjoyment out of them.

I look forward to playing them years into the future and don’t feel limited. It’s rare that a new game piques my interest and rarer that it hits my “list”

LittleBorat2 ,

I think your fear is justified. Gaben needs a personal trainer

Evil_Shrubbery ,

GOG.
We need to support GOG and it’s model as much as possible.

<3

Tywele ,

If only they would support Linux more.

finestnothing ,

Lutris > gog as source > set proton as a runner (or wine, or whatever else if specific games require it, like FFXIV)

blindbunny ,

GOG lazy asses never developed Galaxy because Linux nerds were going to do this anyways

teawrecks ,

I tried this for a while and it was incredibly janky. Heroic launcher is a night and day difference.

Evil_Shrubbery ,

They barely “support” Windows, they aren’t rally a software dev company, they are just sell you the actual game (unlike Valve etc).

And that is precious, the world needs companies that help restore some equality on the market.

And also what Nothing said.

mark3748 ,

they aren’t rally a software dev company

CD Projekt is very much a software dev. I’m not sure why you would think they are not.

rwhitisissle ,

Well, they’re a game developer. And they own GOG. GOG as a subsidiary is a digital distributor of prepackaged digital content. Developing a system that allows people to find a digital item, pay for it, and then download it, is hilariously, vastly different than developing a compatibility layer for games developed for one operating system to run on another. Like…the former is straight up just basic web development. The latter is hardcore systems programming. They are worlds apart.

Evil_Shrubbery ,

1Yes, exactly. Two different things.
And both great at what they do.

One can’t just equate devs.
Its like grandma wanting me to fix her computer because I ‘also have a computer at work’.

sirico ,
@sirico@feddit.uk avatar

The ship has sailed about 4 times now, gog galaxy on Linux has constantly been at the top of requests but we made a stinky about the Witcher 2 so gog and epic will forever hold the community as not worth it. Now the community has done the leg work they have no reason to mess about with translating all those .net calls

squeakycat ,

I used to support them but when they opened the floodgates to trash games I didn’t get much reason to stick around. I miss and crave curation over volume. If both stores have heaps of garbage and steam has far better Linux support with valve actively contributing to and improving the Linux ecosystem… I’m going steam most of the time now.

Sad as in theory I would support gog more but it seems like they’ve discarded what made them special.

Evil_Shrubbery ,

Could you expand on that pls?

Im wondering how does the excess amount of games offered by a store affect your experience. How would you even notice that?

And - that they were a more closed store was what made them special?

Then I think of GOG I think about licencing, how I actually own a game purchased, how I have a key for it, how I’ll still own that game even of GOG stops existing. Thats not true for any of the other stores (outside of physical copies if some sell them, idk).

squeakycat ,

I notice it because the signal drowns out the noise. It’s so hard to browse or find interesting new games made by passionate devs because so much low-effort barely-games and hentai visual novels flood it all out.

I’m all for adult sex games but jfc it’s just sad how awful and unending their presence is.

Evil_Shrubbery ,

Oh … I never randomly browsed game stores for new games to try.

paddirn ,

Well, at least we’ve got global climate change and multiple other threats to the survival of humanity, we won’t have to worry for long.

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